February's End
by Foxwells
Summary: It's time for Light to vanish from the Nonary Game, and be replaced with Nijisaki- Except Aoi does things a little bit out of order. He reasons that this is fine, and that everything should still go to plan. Except it doesn't, and Nijisaki ends up joining the Nonary Game. Needless to say, a few things end up different. But what can be salvaged should be, right?
1. OPTION: Refuse Bookmark

**AUTHOR'S NOTES:**

_Shoutout to my friend Warriors, who's my co-planner in this fanfic._

_Also, to Sandbox: I'm not nicknaming Nijisaki "Sockass", but thank you for that suggestion. I hope the mention it's given is enough._

_To unlock this ending, Warriors and I decided that you would've had to already beat the game, and follow the True End path, but reject the bookmark. From there, what you do doesn't really matter. The ending would happen regardless._

_This fic uses they/them/their pronouns for Gentarou._

* * *

><p>The hospital room was nothing but a black hole. Gentarou peered in with raised eyebrows, looking to their left and then to their right. Someone had shut off the lights, and they'd be damned if they could remember where the switch was. Nothing seemed suspicious, and in their hand they held important cargo, so into the swallowing blackness they went. The open doors sufficed, in minimal, to illuminate the path to the number 3 door. That was all they needed.<p>

In their hand, they held three sets of wiring and panels. The machinery had been outside the door, hidden in a box that was out of everyone's view. Gentarou had a damn good guess what this was for, considering their situation. The REDs from the hospital room were missing- Quite curious, and quite suspicious. Regardless, they'd put the parts back, test to ensure they were operating correctly, and call for the rest. They recalled numbers painted on each of the parts. In their hands, they had them in the order of 3, 7, and then 8. They pulled out number 3 and put the other two in their pocket.

Their steps took them to the door marked with a three. For what the open entrance provided, they could see the RED beside it. They crouched down and felt the bottom of the device. There was a small slit there. They fiddled with the panel in their hand before sliding it in. A click was heard, and the RED beeped to life. Gentarou rose to their feet and pressed their hand to the panel. An asterisk appeared. They pulled the level. They were denied, of course, but it confirmed that they had indeed found the guts of the REDs.

That was it, then. They'd call for the others and turn on the lights. They mused the thought of going to Seven- Such bulk ought to have a loud and bellowing voice. Hands in their pockets, they shuffled away, mind wandering to more relevant things. Particularly, why the REDs were missing in the first place. The whole thing seemed to be a near perfect replica of the game played 9 years prior. Where and why had this difference come about? There was some sort of motive behind it. What that was, though, they couldn't fathom.

Any further deliberation was cut off by some sort of clanging. Gentarou turned heel to see what it was. They certainly hadn't noticed anyone in the room. They squinted through the darkness and took a few steps away from the door. There was indeed something moving about. They stood in frozen apprehension while the figure stumbled around.

A moment later, and they called out, "Hello?"

No reply was offered. Somehow, that made them feel worse. They walked slowly forth, preparing for whatever might come. It was likely one of the players. Why were they snooping around, then?

Several moments of silent suspense passed as Gentarou only drew nearer. The figure had ceased movement, as if mesmerised by the sound of Gentarou's shoes hitting the floor. The figure opted to rest by one of the cots, head fixated toward the only other noise-producing being in the room. As Gentarou's eyes adjusted to the light beyond what the entrance offered, they relaxed. They could see the outfit the other was wearing better.

"Snake," Ace spoke, looking pleasant, "you had me worried there for a moment."

Right, "Snake". Or rather, as Gentarou had come to realise, Light was his name. A blind child with silvery hair- How could they not recall Light Field and his sister Clover Field, who partook in the Nonary Project? Both dangerous people who would need to be silence.

Yes, looking now to this loosely yet almost well-dressed man with… dark hair?

Gentarou hesitated. Light did nothing. They stared in confusion at him. He had dark hair. They were fairly certain Light's hair was silver-coloured, though. They'd gone beyond Door 5 with him! Was it the light (or rather, the lack of) of the room that gave this presentation? They extended out a hand, putting it to Light's to let him be aware of their movements, and seized his wrist. Not harshly, but enough to where they could gently tug him away.

"Come on now, we won't get much done here," they said, attempting to move Light into better view. They needed to check more carefully. With heavy, slow steps, Light began to follow. Ace explained as the two went, "I've found the RED components. We'll be able to move on."

They glanced back in worry. Light was awfully sluggish, as though he'd been drugged. He still failed to speak as well.

_This wouldn't be a bad time to get rid of him._

Hm. Indeed. They had the number 9 bracelet, their own, and a working number 3 door. Their eyes moved back again, now to Light's wrist. The 2 stared back. The math was simple. 1, 2, and 9 had a digital root of 3. From what they knew, no one was due to walk in a long while. They stopped moving and turned around. With Light in better view, they could examine his hair better. It was indeed dark-coloured- Near black. There was something immensely unsettling about that. Their mind thought back to their earlier thoughts of why the lights were off.

And then, Light spoke.

"Hongou… Who's Snake?"

His words were slurred and half-forced out. But more importantly, that voice was not Light's.

Gentarou recoiled back. "Nijisaki."

Suddenly, everything seemed to fall into place. This was a trap set by Zero. They were to believe Nijisaki was Snake and kill him.

_Teruaki is dead._ They began to process everything. _I'm meant to kill Nijisaki. I don't know who's behind Door 1, but is it unreasonable to guess it's Musashidou? Is Zero leading an attack against Cradle?_

All of this was definitely connected to the Nonary Project. This they were sure of.

"Come, sit down," they urged, bringing the lagging Nijisaki to one of the cots. He didn't protest and sat. A weak hand held Gentarou's arm, and he leaned forward, using the other for support.

"It's so dark in here," he mumbled out. "What is this place? There are… numbered doors…"

They bit their lip. What an irritation situation. For the same reason Teruaki had been murdered, Nijisaki needed to die as well. The idea of listening to Zero, though, was disgusting. They loathed the idea, but Nijisaki's mere presence was a threat they couldn't ignore.

Their thoughts occupied their mind as their lips moved without much consideration for the words. This situation was hard to truly grapple.

"We're at Building Q," they explained in a low voice.

"Isn't it… shut down?" Confused eyes stared at nothing in particular. "Why would we be here?"

They let a moment of silence take up the air before answering, "Someone bought it several years ago. Don't you remember?"

"They why are we here?"

Another pause. "We're being forced to play the Nonary Game. "W" being myself and eight others, naturally." They took Nijisaki's left hand and pulled his sleeve back, revealing the bracelet beneath. "Snake is the one with a number two bracelet. I… mistook you for him. It's not exactly easy to see in here."

Nijisaki stared numbly at the bracelet before saying, "I hate the number two." He shook his head. "Why would I have a bracelet, though? I just woke up here."

"I don't know that. The rest of us were on the D-Deck." It was an innocent lie- He didn't need to know he was to be killed in Snake's place. "But, Nijisaki," they crouched down a bit and made eye contact, "this game has deep ties to the Nonary Project. No matter what, you're to deny knowing anything. If anyone knows, it won't end well for either of us."

There was a satisfying fear Nijisaki showed towards Gentarou's seriousness. He gave a nod, saying, "Okay."

A few more questions were given and answered. It was more of gathering the situation than anything else for Nijisaki. He was told of the other players minus Teruaki, but he either didn't count or didn't care. He was told of the nicknames, their progress thusfar, and the situation.

And as this exchange happened, Gentarou considered their options. Nijisaki's appearance would certainly be troubling, to say the least. Two 2 bracelets was suspicious, not to mention how Light and Nijisaki were dressed alike. Nijisaki, while perhaps one of the few people Gentarou felt a genuine trust toward, knew too dangerous of information. They couldn't risk it getting out, regardless of the truth they held toward their cohort.

_That bastard, Zero._ They'd made a situation that made Nijisaki have to die, no matter what.

"Should we go get the others?" Nijisaki looked up now, his drowsiness wearing away. "Given what you said, their reactions might be dangerous, but it's not like I can sneak out."

Gentarou opened their mouth to respond, but was cut short by a higher pitched voice.

"Okay! I'm gonna go look at the hospital room again for a sec!"

Clover. A sharp panic took over Gentarou. No one was supposed to come in. They needed to act, and _now._ They did what first came to their mind- They took the needle armed with Soporil they'd kept in their jacket and pushed it into Nijisaki. They'd found it when they'd first come to the hospital room and meant to save it for themself if a situation called for it, but someone else wasn't a bad target either. They put it back in their pocket in time for a sharp voice to fill the room.

"Ace? Snake!"

Clover ran over, coming to a fast stop when she did. She stared in bewilderment at Nijisaki before asking, "Who's this?" And then with more urgency, "And why is he dressed like Snake?!"

"I-I shouldn't know," Ace stammered out, holding the quickly falling asleep Nijisaki. "I believe I had found the RED parts and came here to investigate, when I encountered," a pause, "whoever this is."

"What-" Nijisaki had spoken up, but cut out to give a hard swallow. "What was that?"

"Can you not hear me?" A concerned hand was put on Nijisaki's shoulder.

"No, no, I can… That thing, that…" He came to a loss of words.

Clover looked offended. "I'm not a thing! I'm a living being, and who are you? Why are you dressed like Snake?" With each passing second, she only grew more agitated.

"Please, Clover, calm down," Ace urged, looking over to her. "I believe this man is drugged with something. He isn't fully here, and-"

"No!" she cut off. "I won't calm down! I can't find Snake anywhere, and then this guy shows up dressed like him?! How do we know he's not Zero or something? No one else should be on this shop!"

"Ship?" Nijisaki echoed.

"We're trapped on a boat," Ace filled in quickly. "I explained this to you a moment ago, when you asked."

The only response they got was a very confused look.

Clover's assault didn't end. "Who are you?! Where's Snake?!"

"_Clover!_" Ace's voice was sharp, though not louder. They looked to her with sympathy in their eyes. "Please, stop yelling. I understand that you're worried, but people won't respond well when you start screaming."

"Shut up!" She looked to bite back tears. "You don't get it, you old," she groped ofr a word, "old, dried-up clay!"

Well. That was new. Still, Ace wasn't offended. She was lashing out due to worry. They released Nijisaki and put a hand to her arm, saying, "No, I might not, but you need to take a breath and sit down. Getting worked up won't help you, and I'm sure your brother is fine."

"How do you know? Why didn't he answer me when I called for him?" She shed away, but tripped on a bed and fell back on it. She sat up and stared at Ace, almost looking betrayed.

Ace looked down at her, a sadness drawn on their face. "I don't know that," they admitted. "He might have wandered off and not heard you, or gotten preoccupied-"

"Snake wouldn't do that! I told you, you don't know anything!" She leaped back to her feet. "I want answers from that guy. It's not a coincidence he's here and my brother isn't."

The two of them looked over to where Nijisaki was. He'd fallen over on his side, his eyes shut. Clover charged over and stomped on his side, letting out a shout for him to get up. Ace darted over as well, yanking her away. Through her thrashing, though, they couldn't hold her, and she stumbled away. She turned around and glared at them. Nijisaki hadn't moved. Had he not been breathing, he might have looked dead.

"Clover," they said sternly, like a parent scolding their child, "settle down."

"Shut up!"

"The fuck's going on in here?"

The two looked over to see white hair walking toward the wall, where lights were flicked on. It was Santa, and he looked rather surprised to see the two. He began to walk over.

Ace explained. "A strange man was found here, dressed like Snake. Along with that, Snake seems to be missing."

Santa glanced at Nijisaki. "No kidding. Is this guy, uh, dead?"

The two looked over. It was Ace to answer again. "No, he's still breathing. I believe he was drugged with something. The effects likely haven't passed."

"Well, wake him up," Clover snapped, pointing at Ace. "I want to talk to him."

"You kicked his side and he didn't move," they reminded. "I think we're going to have to wait a bit. At the very least, we should call the others. The RED parts have been located." They indicated to the number three door. Santa walked over and looked to the device before coming back and nodding.

"But-!" Clover looked to Ace with worry and anger. "My brother wouldn't just leave me like this! Something happened."

"We'll see if he comes, all right?" Ace offered, once more giving her a sympathetic look. "On the off-chance he doesn't show up, we can organise a proper search. The others can help."

There was a long pause where she simply stared at them before finally looking down with defeated eyes. Her voice was quiet, but she pushed out, "All right."

Santa looked at Clover with raised eyebrows. "Do you wanna stay here?"

She gave a small nod and walked to a bed, sitting down and staring at her lap. Ace and Santa watched in a silence before walking out of the hospital room.

"So how do we go about this, just yell out?" Santa asked, looking out at the hallway with all the rooms.

"I suppose." Ace walked forth, coming to where the hallway cut to the room they stood in. They put a hand to their mouth and shouted loud enough for an echo, "The RED parts have been found!"

It was soon that everyone gathered, coming back to the hospital room. Most eyes were turned to the sleeping stranger, with questions being passed around.

"Ask Ace, not me," Santa deflected. "I wasn't the one who found the parts."

But nothing advanced before Junpei, late, walked in, helping a sickly-looking June get into the room. She was sat carefully on a bed.

"What happened?" Santa asked, giving a curious look.

"Her fever spiked again." Junpei sat next to her and let her lean on him, rubbing her shoulder.

"I'll be fine," she spoke up. "I just need to sit for a bit…"

"Don't strain yourself," Junpei insisted, looking to her. He then turned to Santa once more, asking, "What's going on? The REDs were found?"

Santa looked back at the group of the rest, who had divided attention. "Yeah, Ace found them."

Someone new finally talked. It was Lotus, saying, "And who's that? He's dressed like Snake."

Ace answered her. "I found him while I was testing if the RED parts I found were real. I don't know who he is, though."

Lotus looked at the stranger carefully. "Is he dead?"

"No." To be sure, Ace looked over. "He's still breathing. However, he acted as though he was drugged, and," they side-eyed Clover, "previous attempts to wake him up didn't work. I believe we're going to have to wait for a bit."

"Where _is_ Snake, anyway?"

"I don't know."

"He's somewhere!"

All eyes turned to Clover. She'd been silent and sulking ever since anyone walked in, but she'd now shouted and slammed a fist on the cot. She glared at them all.

"Something happened to him, and that guy's connected to it!" Clover got to her feet. "We need to wake him up. We need answers!"

"Maybe we should just try looking for him first." Santa spoke now, a hand to the back of his neck. "I don't like the idea of wasting a bunch of time, but that guy isn't about to get up soon. It's either that, or we leave him here and go through the numbered doors. If we do that, though, we risk never seeing him again, which no one wants. But sitting here is the worst thing we can do right now."

"I don't want to leave June here," Junpei protested, "and she's not looking any better."

June opened weak eyes. "Jumpy, really… I'll be fine."

He put a hand to her head. "I'm not buying it. But," he looked back out, "if you guys are going to search for Snake, I can stay here and keep an eye on June and… whoever that guy is. We can't open a door anyways."

And then, with a bit of reluctance, everyone split up to search the areas they knew. The voices of them calling for Snake could be heard, but as the group reassembled, they began to realise their efforts were to waste. The man they sought was no where to be found.

"So then the next thing," Junpei put together, "would be to see if we can wake that guy up, right?" He motioned towards the sleeping Snake-look-alike.

Seven walked over to where Junpei indicated, saying, "I can handle that."

The scene that followed was, admittedly, entertaining. It started with heavily shaking the stranger, which did absolutely nothing. Some shouting was added before he was bodily grabbed and shaken, if not slapped across the face. The third managed to half-knock the stranger out of Seven's grip. On the upside, he woke up with an outcry of pain.

"'Bout time," Seven remarked, tossing him back onto the best. He just stared back, pale and shaking with a hand to his face.

"Seven," June spoke up, looking at the scene unhappily, "maybe you should be more gentle-"

"Who are you?!" Clover had gotten up and come over, and was staring accusingly at the new number 2. "What have you done with Snake?!" She continued to hound him with questions for a bit.

That was, until Junpei had enough and shouted, "Let him talk!"

She looked over with a glare.

He didn't flinch. "He's beyond scared. Let him breathe, and start easy, or he'll just clam up and get us no where."

She shook her head. "This guy's gotta be Zero!"

"And why would that be?" Lotus interjected, looking skeptical. "Zero has to be somewhere, but why would he come out and dress like Snake? Wear a number 2 bracelet?"

"Then why else is he here? Where's Snake?"Clover's hands fisted as she spoke. "He has to know something."

"Not necessarily." She walked over and raised an eyebrow, leaning forward. He leaned back, looking down at himself as though he were ashamed. A hand came to Lotus' chin, and she asked, "Do you know where we are?"

He shook his head. "A wartime hospital?"

"Close enough." She stood up. "This is Zero's work, but I'm not convinced this guy is him."

"Then why-"

"I don't know. We probably won't find out right now."

"So we just ignore him?" Clover couldn't accept that. She came up to the stranger as Lotus stepped aside, leaning forward and slamming hands down on the bed on either side of him. She glared at him for several long moments while he seemed to shrink in his clothes. She then suddenly recoiled, saying, "Wait, don't I know you?"

He shook his head. "I don't recognise you."

"No. I've seen you before," she insisted. "We've met somewhere."

"Do you remember what?" Seven asked, voicing the thoughts of most everyone.

She paused. "No, but I'm trying."

Ace took up talking after an awkward silence. "Is anyone actually convinced this man is Zero? His appeared is questionable without a doubt, and it raises a lot of questions to what Zero is doing, but we don't have much to suggest he actually _is_ Zero."

Again, a long quiet passed.

"What… are you talking about?" the man finally spoke. "You're talking about snakes and numbers like it makes sense."

No one could think of what to say. Glances were passed, but no one spoke up. There was too much to say and too little time.

Finally, Junpei was the one to give an attempt. "This place is a ship. We all woke up on the D-Deck and were forced to escape from a room. We met at a large staircase, and someone named Zero explained that we were going to play something called the Nonary Game. Snake was one of the people who was playing, but he's gone missing, and you're wearing his clothes and bracelet."

"Bracelet?" The man looked down at himself, and then looked to his wrist. It shone a "2" at him. He looked back up. "What is this thing? What's the Nonary Game?"

A small hum came from Junpei as he thought of how to summarise it. "In basic… Do you see those doors with numbers?" He looked to the wall of them. "We have to pass through those doors, solve a puzzle, gather some items, and move through the ship. We're looking for a door that has a 9 on it. That's how we escape. The bracelets… Do you know what digital roots are?"

He shook his head.

"It's when you take the numbers of the solution of a problem and add them up. Whatever number you get is your digital root. So for example, 4, 5, and 7 added together make 16, right? So you take the 1 and the 6, the numbers of 16, and add them together. You get…"

"Seven," the man finished. He gave a nod. "So the digital root is seven."

"Right. So, to pass through the doors, we need to get the numbers on our bracelets to equal whatever the door says. The numbers have to be in a group of 3 to 5. You check them in at something called the RED, go through the door, and deactivate them at a similar device called the DEAD."

"Deactivate?" The man shot a glance around the group before looking back to Junpei.

Junpei just looked a bit somber. "There are some rules of this game. Everyone who activates must deactivate. The DEAD will only take the numbers checked in at the RED, but anyone who passes through a numbered door will have their bracelet activate. You only have 81 seconds to deactivate. If you don't, or in other words if you break one of the rules, then… Well, we've all been given a bomb. It definitely won't come out, and if you break one of the rules, then it'll… explode."

"Oh," was all he could manage out. His eyes swept the crowd again, and he came to realise one thing: "There's only… eight in this room."

"The person with the number 9 bracelet broke one of Zero's rules," Junpei explained, but he looked far from happy about it.

"What? Why?!"

"I don't know. The 9th man said he'd been lied to, but who or what lied and what that lie was is anyone's guess. He didn't… have time to say." Junpei found himself fiddling with some cloth on his pants. "We don't have much to work with or a lot of time to deliberate. We only have nine hours to escape, or else Zero intends to sink this ship."

"Speaking of our time limit," Santa spoke up, "shouldn't we get moving? Snake clearly isn't around, this guy doesn't know shit, and we haven't even gone through the other doors."

"Can I… get your names first, before we do anything?" the stranger asked, starting to sit up straighter.

"I guess. We've all decided on nicknames over our real ones, though. I'm Santa. My bracelet number is 3."

"Santa and three," the stranger echoed, before seeming to understand. "You made a pun out of your name."

He almost seemed proud. "Yeah. You want one too? We can call you... Ninja."

There was a long pause before the stranger let out a half disappointed sigh. A couple people managed a laugh, Santa included.

Junpei spoke next, and nudged June the slightest. She gave a smile as he said, "This is June, and I'm Junpei. We're numbers 6 and 5, respectively."

"Junpei?" the stranger repeated.

He looked awkward for a moment. "My name was said before we gave out nicknames, so it was a little useless to try anything."

He nodded. That made sense. His eyes moved along the crowd again, latching to Lotus when she spoke next.

"My name's Lotus. I have the number 8 bracelet." She looked to Clover, who had simply shrunken away and retreated to a bed. "The girl over there is Clover. Her bracelet is 4."

Clover attempted no words. Seven filled in the gap by saying with a shrug, "I'm just Seven."

And lastly, Ace introduced themself, saying, "My name is Ace. It goes to follow that my bracelet number is 1."

The stranger nodded, going quiet for a moment as he took all this in.

"What should we call you, then?" Lotus prompted, looking down at him.

Clover spoke up again, suggesting with a bitter tone, "What about the name Sockass? Socks come in pairs, and Zero's an ass." She stared directly at the stranger as she spoke.

He gave a nervous look, and answered, "I was just thinking Pisces. There's two fish in the symbol, so it matches."

She directed her glare at nothing and grumbled something inaudible.

"Pisces, huh…" Lotus nodded. "All right. Then the only thing to do is sort out the doors. One's going to have to remain unexplored. That, and I don't think we can take everyone along."

"Wait, what?" Junpei spoke now. "Why's that?"

"Well first of all, look at June. She doesn't look like she can do very much right now," Lotus argued.

"I'm getting better," the person in question spoke up.

Lotus looked unimpressed. "Right. And if you are, then do you know any numbers that could let everyone go through?"

June paused. "No, but we just need to sort it out. There's _something_ out there."

Pisces looked rather confused. "Where's the issue?"

Lotus looked over. "Do you know some numbers?"

He nodded. "Just send three to a door."

She turned away. "You didn't sleep long enough," she dismissed.

"But, I'm not wrong," he persisted. "Was the 9th man's bracelet destroyed?"

"The bracelet?" He'd caught Lotus' interest again. "I… don't know. What do you mean by the bracelet? He's dead."

"But, if the bracelet isn't destroyed, it could still be used." He spoke as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Could still be used? How do you know?"

He froze. "I- I… don't. I don't know, but do we have to be wearing the bracelet for it to be used? Do you know if they stop working when the wearer dies?"

"Well, no," Lotus admitted with reluctance.

Ace suddenly cut in. "I will go retrieve it if everyone else is curious about this."

Lotus let a hand touch the side of her head. "You might as well. I'm not going back there." She looked back at Pisces as Ace shuffled away, saying, "The thought of that didn't really occur to me. What's given you the idea it still works?"

"It's just… better than leaving people behind, right?" He gave a smile that wasn't convincing. "We might as well try."

"And if it doesn't work?" she asked. "Then what do you suppose we do?"

"We'll have to keep thinking." Pisces looked towards the doors. "I'm trying to think of any numbers that would work to get everyone through."

"What will likely happen is that we have to leave some people behind."

"No!" June spoke up now, looking at Lotus. "There has to be a way for everyone to go if the bracelet doesn't work. We need to think it over."

"Get back to me on that. But the way I see it, we can lower our numbers to just one." Lotus looked to the doors. "We send 1 and 2 through door 3 along with either 4 and 5 or 3 and 6, and then the remaining two of the pairs join up with someone else to take either 7 or 8."

"And are you ready to be the one left behind?" June countered.

"No." She was blunt in her tone. "But I figured this was the best way to have you stop complaining."

Junpei cut in before June could reply, assessing June's current status. Things got very quiet after that, an uncomfortable silence taking over and staying until Ace returned with the bracelet.

"So you want me to hover it by the RED and see if it'll scan?" Ace reviewed, coming to the number three door with the bracelet in hand. The "9" on it shined brightly.

Pisces gave a nod, and Ace did as instructed. A red asterisk appeared on the RED.

"Well, your guess was right," Lotus said. "Everyone should be able to get through a door, then."

Santa came over to June, saying, "Then let's stop wasting time and split up. Junpei, you'll be with Clover."

"What? I can't be with June?" Junpei frowned.

"A 5 and 6 don't make a 9. If we're going to go through a door, you'll have to join Clover."

"But-!" Junpei couldn't come up with an argument.

Seven walked up. "Hey, don't worry. We're probably gonna end up meeting together anyways. We did that once, right? And we can't get through the 9 door unless we do. I don't think even Zero's about to go and stop his own game."

With reluctance, Junpei passed June to Santa. She was fine to walk, but still seemed rather weak. The groups then split up, with Junpei and Clover joining Seven. June and Santa went with Lotus to Door 8, and Ace was assigned Door 3 with Pisces and the number 9 bracelet. Three beeps and a set of doors swinging open later, and Ace and Pisces had vanished. Soon after, the other six went into their doors as well.


	2. OPTION: Door 7

**AUTHOR'S NOTES:**

_The chapter has NagiGen if you squint? I didn't notice it at first. My friend had to point it out._

_Speaking of my friends, they kept making jokes about Gentarou and Nijisaki being behind Door 3... Most of them were NSFW shipping jokes. Then one of my friends said, "The Nonary Game is no time for screwing around." I think I'm secretly friends with Junpei._

* * *

><p>The doors let out groan as they shut, a hard echo filling the hallway. It was an empty sound, and while Nagisa seemed to jump a bit and have fear flicker in his eyes as a dull beeping took place of the echo, Gentarou was fairly calm. There was no need to get worked up- 81 seconds was plenty of time to get to the DEAD, and they recalled exactly where it was.<p>

Still, the two bolted. It was a natural reaction despite their rationale dictating a lack of need to be worked up. They made their way around a corner and pulled open a door. Nagisa was the first in, his hand slamming against the DEAD. Gentarou followed in suit, putting their hand to it as well and raising the number 9 bracelet up against it. The numbers were registered. The lever was pulled. The beeping came to a stop, and Nagisa let out a held breath.

"Turn on the light, will you?" Gentarou asked, looking over to where they could hear Nagisa breathing. There was some kind of a movement and mumble, and a bit later, there was light.

Nagisa looked around as if needing reassurance to where he was. He looked a bit frazzled- Relieved, but still mildly panicked. It made sense, at least. He was intelligent, but not the most cool-headed. Not on Teruaki's level by any means (no one was on Teruaki's level), but he was easily startled. It'd lead to shenanigans before.

Now, though, was no time for them. Giving a nod and a thanks to the calming Nagisa, Gentarou came over to one of the stalls in the bathroom.

"Wait."

They stopped and looked over, their hand on the stall door. "Yes?"

Nagisa began to walk over. "What… are you doing?"

"We have a puzzle to solve." They entered and came back out after a bit of noise, holding a red card. They looked over to Nagisa, who had resolved to just stand there. "Have you forgotten how to solve them?"

"No…" He watched as Gentarou came over to the showers next and crouched down by a panel, opening it. They then began to turn valves on pipes as Nagisa finally elaborated with, "I don't get how you're so calm."

They stood back up after the valves were to how they wanted and looked over. "There's no point to getting worked up. We were going to cross just fine. There are other things to consider." They then moved to a now flooded drain in the middle of the floor and pulled the cover off of it. A blue card was fished out and shook a bit before being wiped on their pants.

Things to consider indeed. Gentarou stood up, now with the necessary materials for escape obtained. They tossed a look to Nagisa. He was fine by now. Fine… and that was perhaps part of the problem. Their chance to get rid of him was gone. Clover had interrupted just before they were about to go shove him through Door 3. It was overly irritating.

_No, the chance isn't entirely gone. I have him isolated here, and the means to kill him._

They still had Teruaki's knife. It was still possible to eliminate him and any threat that he might talk. He hadn't the blind trust Teruaki had. He would be harder to control and manipulate than if Teruaki had, for some reason, lived.

_Except… it would be too obvious if I killed him. If he doesn't come out alive, the others will grow suspicious. If they find him dead, the only one who could've killed him was me. There's no one else here, and little reason for something like suicide, unless they want to suggest I antagonised him enough. That, though, wouldn't be something of the nature they're aware of._

"Gentarou…"

So the answer was obvious. They couldn't kill him.

"Or uh, Ace. Is... something wrong? You're staring at me."

They paused, and shook their head, closing their eyes as Nagisa spoke. A deep breath passed through them. "I was thinking."

Nagisa raised his eyebrows, but gave a small nod. "If you say so."

Gentarou turned away and came to the door. "Let's leave, then. We have nothing else to do here." They raised up the red key card, but stopped at a tug on their arm. They looked over to Nagisa, who'd grabbed them with a word of halt. "Yes?"

Nagisa paused, let go, and pulled his hand back. "Don't you think it would be suspicious if we came back so soon?"

"Who's going to know that? As far as the others would know, we just came back a little bit before them. I see nothing suspicious." But at the very least, they'd lowered their arm.

He shifted slightly. "The noise? You're the one who said we need to throw off suspicion from ourselves, and it's just the two of us. If we solve it faster than everyone else, they're going to either think out puzzle was ridiculously easy, we're geniuses, or something is up."

Perhaps he had a point. The puzzles were meant to take about 10 to 15 minutes, and they'd solved it in just one or two. They put the card back and stepped away from the door, instead going to the shower wall and leaning on it. As they did, they asked, "What do you suggest we do, in that case?"

"Well…" Nagisa came over to the left-most stall and went inside, pulling out a bucket. "There's something I want to get first."

Gentarou gave a quizzical look. "Reading too many webcomics lately?"

"... What?"

"Never mind." They waved a dismissive hand and got off the wall, turning to the panel from before. They crouched down and said, "You want to get the screwdriver."

Nagisa nodded and came over as Gentarou began to put the valves back.

"We don't need to open the thermometer, you know," they remarked, looking up as they finished putting the settings to normal. "The password should still be 1-7-7-6."

Nagisa turned on the faucet anyways and began to put water in it. "I have a feeling we're going to end up needing it. Not immediately, but… in the future."

"Why's that? If another puzzle needs it, it'll provide one." Gentarou stood up as Nagisa turned off the water and came to one of the stalls, pouring the water into the tank.

He called back, "Just trust me on this one." He came back out with it in hand.

"You can admit to wanting a weapon," Gentarou said with a bit of amusement in their voice. They leaned back on the wall.

"It's not that." Nagisa dried it off. "Why would I need a weapon?"

They shrugged. "You tell me that. I'm not the one who wanted to go after it."

"I don't." He managed a bit of a smile, and pocketed the tool. The smile quickly faded though, and he looked back up at Gentarou. "I have been wondering something, though."

"That being?"

"Do you know who the 9th Man was?"

Gentarou's eyebrows furrowed for a moment before raising. "Not particularly, why?" They put a hand in their coat pocket. No, Nagisa didn't need to know who the 9th Man was. He might draw dangerous conclusions.

"I thought you might not just want to say anything you'd figured out about him in front of everyone." Nagisa sounded a bit disappointed. "Can you describe him, at least?"

"He was a very nervous man, but I assume that's due to his plan to hold Clover hostage."

"Wait, what?"

"He died, did he not?" Their tone was unimpressed. "We didn't just shove him in. He held Clover hostage and forced us to open the door. He then tossed her away and ran into Door 5, ultimately meeting his end. He was nervous throughout it."

Nagisa mulled over that for a bit before nodded. "Makes sense, then. Anything about his appearance, or more on his personality?"

"We didn't see much of him, but he was bossy. As for appearance… He was dressed like he might be affiliated with a school. He also had dark, fluffy hair."

There was silence as Nagisa seemed to wrack his brain for any ideas on the identity of this person, but eventually concluded, "I can't think of who that might be either. Did anyone show any kind of connection to him?"

"Not from what I can tell. No one seems to know him." Their free hand fisted and fidgeted a bit.

"That's fine." Nagisa's arms folded. "What about Snake?"

"What is he like?"

"Yes. Or- Physical appearance."

Gentarou paused. "He's dressed like you, first of all."

Nagisa looked down and tugged at the clothes. They were odd-fitting on him. "Besides that."

"He has silver hair, and is blind."

There was a silence from Nagisa before he asked, "And, is Snake's real name "_Light Field",_ by any chance?" His arms fell. "A pink-haired girl nicknamed Clover who happened to recognise me, who also has a brother who has silver hair and is blind, is a little too convenient. Those two were from the experiment nine years ago."

Another pause from Gentarou. "I reached similar conclusions."

"... You weren't kidding when you said this game is connected to the one 9 years ago." A tense laughter came from Nagisa, but he didn't seem at ease after the noise.

Gentarou didn't provide much of an emotional response. "Why would I joke about something like that? This situation is far from humourous or desirable."

"Yeah, I guess jokes wouldn't make much sense." He shifted a bit, standing awkward.

_I've made him uncomfortable._ Gentarou swallowed down a sigh and got off the wall. Their hand came from their pocket and they came over to Nagisa, saying, "It's certainly something to think about, though. Why are people connected to the game here? Why is this game even being held? I'm still trying to put it together."

"I'm not sure. I've only just joined in." Nagisa directed his gaze toward the wall.

"Another curious movement of Zero."

"Well…" He paused, and looked back at Gentarou.

"You haven't been planning this all behind my back, have you?" They looked mildly amused.

"What? No." He frowned. "Why would I put myself in it if there was already a number 2?"

"To throw me off?"

"It's gone badly if that was my goal." He seemed more at ease.

_Objective fulfilled._

A bit of a smile came to Gentarou. "Apparently, you aren't a very good Zero."

"There goes my hopes for being one." Nagisa smiled with, apparently having forgotten Gentarou's earlier question of motive for jokes about things like this. "But, I did have a thought on why I'm dressed as Snake."

"That being?"

"Well you found me first, right?" He only continued when Gentarou gave a nod. "I think Zero wanted you to believe that I was Snake. I could hardly walk I was so drugged, let alone talk. I'm amazed I even remember any of that. But I think Zero wanted to take advantage of-"

"Yes." Gentarou's interjection was sharp and silencing. They hesitated before continuing, now looking with a bit of a glare. "... I believe so as well. Whoever Zero is, they know about that, and they know about the Nonary Project."

"But why would they want to have you mistake me for Snake?" Nagisa put a hand to his chin. "The others would be able to sort out easily that I'm not just from a look at my hair."

"That's beyond me. I haven't put together why Zero would do that, but at the very least, the room was probably dark so that I wouldn't be able to initially see your hair colour."

Nagisa's hand fell. "That makes sense. That doesn't exactly cover that the others would be able to tell I'm not Snake, unless I wasn't meant to be seen by the others."

"We don't have enough information to determine that," Gentarou said a bit quickly. Or rather, Nagisa was forbidden from thinking about that. "Zero is someone very crafty with a lot of knowledge- They wouldn't allow a gap like that to exist unless they could predict everyone's movements. But you'd have to be able to see into the future to do that."

"I don't know; I think I can predict what you might do in situations decently," Nagisa countered.

Gentarou let a hand run through their hair a bit. "Because you're very familiar with me."

"And Zero isn't? They know a lot of things they shouldn't. I can't imagine who it might be." He thought for a moment before proposing, "Kubota or Musashidou? I don't think Kubota would, but Musashidou was always sort of independent. He didn't care much for any of the reasons behind the Nonary Project, such as scientific research, and he didn't have much of a personal motive from what I ever picked up on."

"What motive would he have to do this?" Gentarou looked around the room. "Why would he bother to restore the Nonary Game?"

"Yeah, good point, but I don't think Kubota would do it either, nor do they have much of a reason." Nagisa scratched the side of his head. "Well, who bought Building Q? You said that's where we are, right?"

Gentarou looked back at Nagisa. "Unless you mean to propose that someone pulled the Gigantic out from the bottom of the ocean and restored it all, then yes, Building Q is where we are. As for who bought the building… The company was called Crashkeys, I believe."

"Oh, right. Then, whoever runs that company is probably Zero, right? Or someone connected to it, anyways. I don't remember who runs it, though."

"Neither do I, but that's a very likely possibility. I'll admit that I hadn't even considered that."

Nagisa looked a bit proud at that statement. "It's a good thing we managed to get alone here then, right?"

Gentarou nodded. "Indeed, but it's not going to happen again."

"Well no, I don't see why we'd come through Door 3 again."

"Beyond that, I doubt we'll end up crossing another door together, except the 9th one."

"What makes you say that? There are plenty of other number combinations that would work."

"Well, think it over for a bit." Gentarou went into his pocket and pulled out a calculator. They then handed it to Nagisa. "Assume we enter either Door 6 or 1-"

"What about 2?"

"What about it?"

"Why wouldn't we enter that? Doesn't it have a submarine in it? That's an escape route."

Gentarou shook their head. "This is Building Q, Nijisaki. That submarine goes no where. It'd be pointless to go to that room."

"By that logic, then, we'd need to go through Door 6, right? It leads to 9."

There was a pause. "I suppose so, yes."

"Right. So, we go through Door 6." Nagisa entered 1 and 2 on the calculator. "We'd then need the number 3 bracelet to get through." He put it in and presented the "6" on the screen.

"And the other combinations? How would they work?"

"Well…" He went back to the device. "4, 7, and the 9 bracelet could take Door 2. That would leave 5, 8, and 6, whose digital root is…" He thought. "Oh. It's 2. We wouldn't be able to cross through the number 9 door anyways. We'd need bracelet 6."

Gentarou was momentarily surprised by the idea, but nodded. "That's very true."

Admittedly, they'd just been planning to get the number 8 bracelet, but they supposed they probably wouldn't be able to make use of that anyways- They weren't going to end up with the number 9 bracelet in their possession past this door.

He nodded and looked back down at the calculator. "If we chose Door 1, we'd need Seven to come with us. Then 5, 6, and 8 could do Door 2, and 3, 4, and 9 get-"

"-Seven."

"Right… And if we went with Door 2, we'd need 8. Then 6, 4, and 5 could have Door 6, which would leave 3, 7, and 9 to Door 1."

"That digital root is indeed 1."

"See, there's one solution." He handed the calculator back. "We won't be alone, but…"

Gentarou put it back. "Another combination that can open all the doors are 6 being taken by 7, 8, and 9, Door 2 being taken by you, 3, and 6, and Door 1 being taken by myself, 4, and 5. It was the first one I thought of, and 7 and 8 can't open the number 9 door by themselves, so there's no risk with them leaving anyone behind."

Nagisa nodded. "That seems like another good solution. Are you going to propose it to everyone when we meet back up?"

"Perhaps. We'll see how everything ends up. 4 and 5 are interchangeable with 3 and 6, after all. You might end up with Clover and Junpei."

"I'd rather not, honestly." Nagisa looked off to the side. "Has she shown any sign of recognising you?"

"No. I don't know if Light has told her anything, but she certainly had no reaction to me as she did to you. After all, she was in Building Q, and Light isn't aware of my appearance."

Nagisa watched as Gentarou turned away and began to move toward the door, saying that they'd probably passed enough time to safely leave. But he didn't move, and just watched. Watched as Gentarou stopped and looked over their shoulder, watched as they asked if he was coming, watched as they raised an eyebrow at the lack of response. And then finally, he said, "I think… Clover or Light, or… maybe even both… might be Zero."

"That so?" Gentarou looked back to the door. "I suppose that would make sense. They'd know about the game 9 years before. I can't think of revenge as too strong of a motive to go to this extent- Why not just kill us? Do they want us to experience it ourselves?" There was a pause, and then a sharp "_Ha!"_ came from them. "No, I don't think they're Zero."

"Why's that?"

"Beyond revenge not being a strong enough motive, they're missing a few things." Gentarou faced Nagisa again, and began to walk back over. "We've established a few things about Zero. They're connected to the Nonary Project, they're connected to Crashkeys, likely a person of status within the company if I had to guess, they have the ability to predict our movements, and they know little details most shouldn't. The only thing we know they match is that they're connected to the Nonary Project."

"Well, they're Espers, aren't they?"

"What of it, Nijisaki?"

"Maybe that's how they're able to predict movements?" He gave an unsure smile.

Gentarou shook their head. "Zero is able to predict everyone's movements, but neither of us are Espers. I don't know about everyone else, but at the very least, they wouldn't be able to predict my own."

"How are you so sure?" Before Gentarou could give word, Nagisa said, "Think of what we know about Espers and the morphogenetic fields. Everyone communicates across the fields to some level, be it receiving or sending information on a conscious or unconscious level. Espers are simply people who have stronger access to it- People who have that conscious level of sending and receiving. Is it impossible that their skills have grown over these nine years, and they're able to pull at information being sent unconsciously?"

There was a bit of a pause from Gentarou before they asked, "And how would that relate to how they're able to predict movements?"

Nagisa opened his mouth, and then closed it. He then looked to the thermometer on the wall. "I guess you're right. You'd need to see into the future or know someone really well to be able to predict what they're going to do. There's definitely a reason Clover and Light are here, but perhaps they aren't Zero."

"Indeed not. But, Nijisaki…" Gentarou reached out a hand and grabbed the other's chin, pulling Nagisa into looking at them. "This is the last time we're going to be able to speak unfiltered for a while. Absolutely none of this conversation or your knowledge of nine years prior can leave this room. Do you understand?"

The near immediate reply was, "Of course." A short silence then followed where Gentarou pulled back their hand. Nagisa added to his former words, "It'd be bad for me as well if the other players got word of the Nonary Project. Or do you not trust me?"

"I do." A lie, but he didn't have to know. "However, I'm very cautious."

Nagisa smiled. "Don't worry. My mouth is shut."

And that was the end of anything major. The two stayed for a bit longer, discussing other factors such as how the other players might be connected, but neither could come up with much. They then decided it was safe to leave, and did so. The hallway was empty, without much noise. The two began to head down it, having fallen into quiet.

Before they could get to the door, though, a door was opened, and footsteps filled the air. Three people soon followed. They were Clover, Junpei, and Seven.

"Hey!" Junpei said as he quickly caught up. "Do you guys know where this door goes?"

"No, but it looks like the only exit," Ace answered, looking over the three.

"Wait, what's this?" It was Clover. She was facing the wall, looking at something hanging on there. The others joined.

"It's a map." Junpei reached up and took it down, eyeing it over. "I think we're… here." He folded the map up a bit, and indicated to a large square filled with smaller rectangles. "That's the hospital room, isn't it? And then the doors are here, and we came out here, so then this door goes to…" He looked back up at the exit.

Seven finished his words. "Goes back to the hospital room, yeah." He pulled away from the little pack that had formed and moved to the door. "This is probably the one that wasn't numbered."

Junpei nodded and joined him, with the other three trailing. "That makes sense."

"Not really. Why'd Zero do that?" Seven shoved open the door. "There's no more doors to open."

The group began to move through as Ace offered the idea of, "Well, when the other three are back, we should share findings and see if we can figure out what to do next. I don't think Zero's truly left us with no doors to explore."

They moved to the hospital room, and Seven asked, "Why's that? You know where the rest are?"

"Not in exact, but I have a guess." They went to their pocket and pulled out the blue card they retrieved from the shower room. "We found a card with the Mercury symbol on it. There were also some elevators that had the Mercury symbol on their lock. Presumably, we'll activate them, and a door or doors will be behind it."

"We found something like that as well," Junpei chimed in. He pulled out a key, whose handle bore the Jupiter symbol. "It's for the door at the end of that long hallway with all the rooms."

Seven talked again, asking, "Do you think the others found a key of the sorts, then?"

The answer came in the form of Santa shoving open the doors and shouting, "Everyone else is in here!"

He came into the room, June and Lotus following. They looked a bit winded, as though they'd been running or were panicked. Maybe a bit of both. They came to the cots were everyone had either sat or leaned on, and a moment later, the group bubbled in discussion of everything that had gone down. Voices sometimes spoke over each other, and mild insults were given, but the stories eventually got out.

Junpei, Clover, and Seven had ended up in an operating room where they had to assemble mannequins. They obtained the Jupiter Key, which unlocked a door at the end of the big hall. Meanwhile, Lotus, Santa, and June had ended up in a laboratory, where technology led their escape and gave them a key with an Earth symbol on it. It opened the matching door on the A Deck of the ship.

"So, should we get going, then?" Lotus asked.

Junpei raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"Isn't it obvious? We go open everything, see what's beyond and come back here to share what we found. The groups can just be the people who found it." She spoke in a more matter-of-fact tone than anything, but it still came across as insulting.

"Oh… Right. That makes sense."

She nodded. "Unless anyone has any protests?"

Santa spoke up. "How long will we spend doing this?"

"Ten minutes or so? We're not going through any numbered doors, so." A hand rested on her hip. "Do you think we'll need more time?"

"Nah, that's good. One last thing, though. How are we going to get back to the staircase? Can you open a numbered door from the backside?" He looked over to the doors they'd entered earlier. "Would that activate your bracelet? I mean, you're technically passing through a numbered door, right? And Zero said then your bracelet would set off."

Junpei spoke up among pocket rustling. "Wait." He pulled out the map from his pocket.

"Hey, what's that?" Lotus walked over and snatched it from him.

"A map."

"Where did you get a map?"

"Clover found it in the hallway. Sorry, I forgot you weren't there." He gave an apologetic smile.

Lotus just gave a grumble of a reply and scanned the thing. She then handed it back to Junpei, saying, "I understand you. The key you all found and the door it opens will lead to the staircase."

He nodded. "That leaves three of us out of stuff to do though."

"Not exactly. You still have the Saturn Card, right?"

Junpei searched himself for a moment before presenting it. "Oh, right. There was an elevator that needed it, right?"

She nodded. "You all can search what's beyond there. We'll meet back up at the C-Deck stairs in ten minutes."

With the groups decided, everyone made their way down the hallway. The door was unlocked, and sure enough, it lead to the central staircase. From there, everyone split up, going to where their doors indicated.

Upon coming back near the hospital room, to the elevators that were previously locked, Gentarou swiped the Mercury Card through it. The scanner beeped to life.

"This goes to Door 2, right?" Nagisa asked as the lever on the side of the scanner was pulled.

Gentarou nodded. "We won't be able to enter, though."

"If we had Lotus with us, we could," he said as he entered the elevator, Gentarou following. "I never liked what's beyond Door 2, though. The confinement rooms were always creepy."

"And the room beyond them isn't?"

"It is."

The elevator opened, and Gentarou began to walk down the hall to Door 2. "Depending on what everyone wants to do, you should be ready to deal with it."

"Well, at least you'll be with me, right?" He paused, and Gentarou looked mildly amused. He quickly added in, "You don't seem as bothered by it."

They looked back. "I can't say I enjoy being back there either, but I don't make it as visible or audible as you do."

Nagisa let out a quiet, "Oh." He let his eyes drop to look at the floor where he walked. "Well… It's just an atmosphere. It's not like anyone actually dies or anything beyond there."

"Assuming you follow the rules of the game and don't waste what time we have left, you'll be fine," Gentarou assured before coming to a stop.

Nagisa half-slammed into him, and moved away quickly, mumbling an apology. He looked up. Before them was Door 2.

Gentarou stared at it for a little bit before saying, "Well, that was fun." They then turned away and began to walk back. "Get acquainted. You're likely to go through it."

Quickly following, Nagisa repeated, "Likely to go through it?"

"Remember the numbers we discussed? In both solutions proposed, you go through Door 2."

"Well, yes, but there are other solutions." Nagisa looked back at the door before turning his head forward again. "What door do you want to take?"

They glanced over. "Trying to trail me?"

"No, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious."

"Fair enough. I was considering Door 6." It was a major lie, but they just fisted their right hand and kept talking. "I want to be able to investigate any differences that Zero might have implemented to the number 9 doors, and that will bring me quickest to it."

"Do you think Zero might've done something?" Nagisa summoned up the elevator, and stepped inside. He talked as Gentarou followed, saying, "The end of the Nonary Game is the incinerator. Only one group can pass through it. The rest have to solve the sudoku puzzle. But that puzzle is something that has to be manually activated by someone, presumably someone who runs the game. If anything, that seems like the most likely trap."

"The most likely, and that's why I doubt it. Zero would expect us to think that way, or do you think that's unreasonable?" The elevator opened. The two walked out. Gentarou continued. "So far, Zero has proven more than capable of knowing what people are going to do. I wouldn't rule out predicting thought patterns."

There was silence from Nagisa for a moment before he let out a resigning sight. "This Zero just gets tougher and tougher to sort out. But you're right. Still, even if we're expecting a trap, it doesn't mean we're about to go find it out. We'd have to actually get to the incinerator to inspect for what could be there, and by then, we might've fallen right into it."

"You make it sound as though Zero wants to kill us."

"Maybe they do."

That got Gentarou to turn his head to Nagisa. "What makes you say that?"

"Well, think about it. You trick everyone into false security. You show the two 9 doors, and let everyone believe they're saved. The Nonary Game isn't supposed to kill anyone. Then, it's easy to take people down. Since we think it should be a 9 door, they let us just get trapped in the incinerator and burn…" His voice faded out, and he looked at nothing in particular. "A motive could be, um. Well, that'd be the reason behind this whole game."

"Quite so. I don't think we can draw very many conclusions right now, but a trap is certainly possible." Gentarou looked forward. "We'll have to keep it in mind. For now, though, let's proceed under the assumption that everything is as it should be. We're almost back, anyways. Tell me your thoughts on Door 2."

"Wait, what?" Nagisa gave an unsure look.

"What we found beyond the elevator."

There was a pause, and then he understood. "Well, it's… certainly a door."

"Indeed. And what do you suppose could be beyond it?"

"Given how this is a hospital place, um…" He thought it over. "An entertainment place? Staff lounge? Or maybe even a burial place for people who didn't live." He muffled down a smile.

"A burial place? Are you supposing beyond there is a bunch of dirt?"

"Not that kind of burial site." He helplessly let out a laugh.

He was given a stern look and the words, "Then I don't know what you mean."

"I guess I don't know what I mean either." He quickly swallowed down his amusement. "I guess you can't really bury people on a ship, unless you mean to sink it."

"And that's what'll happen to us if we don't find Door 9 in time." Ace's tone, though, had calmed, coming to be more of stating fact than before.

"I was making a joke," came the discouraged reply, along with a look given to the wall. An awkward silence came in, and he quickly changed topic, saying, "Well, anyways. There's certainly something beyond there, right?"

"Indeed. And the floor it's on isn't flooded, either. Don't you find that curious?"

He nodded. "There's some way the water is being controlled. Or maybe there's a bomb that'll go off on that floor as well?"

"You guys found a bomb?"

It was Junpei's voice. He ran up some stairs to meet at the place where the two had stopped. Clover and Seven followed at a walk.

"Oh, no," Pisces corrected quickly. "There's a deck below the flooded one, so I was thinking of what's going to happen when time is up."

"We found a deck below the D-Deck as well." There was a moment of pause, before he added, "Well, I guess we all went to elevators."

Ace looked up the stairs. "Save for the three exploring what's beyond the Earth Door, yes." They looked back down. "What did you find beyond the Saturn Elevators?"

"We found Door 6. Not that we could really open it, but…" He gave a smile in placement of words.

"No, I wouldn't expect that."

"What did you two find?"

"We discovered Door 2." They side-eyed Pisces. "No bombs, though. Just a door."

"It was a suggestion," Pisces spoke up, exasperated. "I don't get how Zero's going to sink a ship when the current water isn't moving."

"I was thinking maybe he has some kind of a remote control for a water-tight door," Junpei said. "How else would the water have been cut off?"

Clover suddenly jumped in the conversation, glaring at Pisces and asking, "How do you know the D-Deck was flooded?"

Looks were shared between the group. Pisces was momentarily startled, but recovered quickly and explained, "Ace told me. While we were solving the puzzle behind Door 3. I was filled in on a couple things Junpei hadn't mentioned, like the first doors you all went through and all that."

Junpei looked a bit embarrassed. "Sorry. I was trying to give a quick run-through."

"It's fine." Pisces' eyes went from Clover to Junpei, and then back to Clover.

She was just staring back with a hard look. Pisces shifted and cleared his throat before turning away, looking at the ground instead. Emptiness and tenseness filled the air around everyone, remaining there until Santa, June, and Lotus came back.

Their report was that they'd found Door 1. The others shared what they found as well, and then Junpei spoke up with an idea.

"Why don't we do a kind of vote to see where everyone wants to go? That way, people won't feel forced to say a certain door so that the numbers all match up. We can see who wants what and work out what works from there." He pulled out a notebook and marker. "I have the means to do it, at least."

And so, papers were torn, and the marker was passed around. Each paper was folded and tossed into a pile where Junpei prepared to read them aloud.


	3. OPTION: Door 1

Junpei's eyes ran over the paper in hand, calling it out.

"All right. First is Santa's vote. He wants Door 6." The paper was set aside. "I'll put anyone who wants to go through Door 6 here."

No one gave much of a word against it. Junpei continued, grabbing the next paper. "This is Seven's, and he wants Door 2." A new pile was made. "Door 2's will go here."

"Can you be any slower?" Lotus snapped at him. "I thought this was going to be a faster method than just saying it."

"All right, all right." Junpei picked up the next paper. "Clover wants Door 4." He made a new pile, but without explanation. He just went for the papers, one after the other, calling them out. "June wants Door 6. Ace wants Door 1. Lotus wants Door 2. Pisces wants Door 2 as well."

A moment's hesitation, barely there, hadn't escaped Gentarou's notice, but they said nothing as Junpei just said, "I want Door 1," and put the paper down. There was a pause, and he concluded, "So… These numbers aren't going to work."

"I never could've guessed that," Pisces said sarcastically in reply, coming over to the piles and crouching to see how else they could calculate. Most of the others gathered as well.

Santa, though, seemed to have an issue, and said, "Hey, let me see your paper, Junpei."

"Uh… Sure." Junpei pulled it from the Door 1 pile and handed it to Santa. Santa scanned it over and over again. Junpei looked confused. "Something wrong?"

Slowly, Santa put it back. "Just making sure you didn't cheat…"

"How could I do that? I wrote it down before I put it there," he countered.

Santa gave no reply to that, and just asked instead, "So, what do we do? Only the people who want to go through Door 1 can actually go."

Pisces backed away from the papers and presented what he'd sorted out. 3 had been moved to the Door 2 pile. He looked to Santa. "You could come with us."

"Hold on," Junpei quickly interjected, looking at the new numbers. "That leaves June alone." He glanced to her. "We can't do that."

"And… why not?" Pisces raised his eyebrows.

"What?! You want to leave her to _die?!_ We can't leave anyone behind!"

There was a pause where Pisces seemed startled, as though he hadn't thought that was possible. He then thought for a moment, mulling over that, and then seemed to understand. "You think we can't meet back up with her."

Junpei's eyebrows furrowed. "You're acting like you know what's gonna happen."

"And you acted like voting was a good idea," Pisces retorted.

"What?"

He rolled his eyes. "My point being, I don't know. But think back to the doors we just went through. We all met back up, didn't we? So why wouldn't we now?" He then stopped, looking around for a moment. He was suddenly very aware of the seven sets of eyes staring intently at him. He shifted for a moment, but carried with his explanation. "I can't imagine that the person behind this would want people to be left behind if something like this happened."

Someone besides the two spoke now. It was Santa, saying, "So, you're saying Zero wants us to ride together and die together?"

"That's… one way of putting it, yes." Pisces looked back to Junpei, but anything else that might've been said was cut off by Santa again.

"Well, I don't want to go through Door 2 anyways." Santa threw a look to Lotus' direction. "Not if it's gonna toss me with that old hag again. I got enough of that already."

A couple of people inched away from Lotus, and wisely so. She'd turned sharply to Santa and gave a glare that could kill. "What did you just say?"

He met her nasty look without flinching. "You heard me. I'm tired of you and your mop hair."

Pisces let out a mutter of, "Says the one wearing _those_ kinds of pants," but it was ignored. Santa was distracted by the furious Lotus.

"Oh, because your bratty self is a wonder to be around!" she snapped at him.

"Are you just grumpy because you missed out on your book talk with the other grandmas? Or is it just past your 8'o'clock bedt-_ime!_"

His voice cut to a shout as Lotus lunged out at him. He managed to move just in time, and turned around, giving a sneer. "Your old bones are going to have to move faster than that!"

"Oh, you're going to pay now!" When Seven let out a small laugh, she turned to him, and added, "That includes you!"

Santa regained her focus with, "Come get some from me first, you old bag!"

"_Enough._"

Ace stepped between the two, an arm held out, looking something of a parent dealing with bickering children. "We don't have time for arguments like this. Clearly, Santa and Lotus should not be in another room together. Is there another solution to the doors? We can make use of the 9 bracelet, which should provide us with more options." They looked to the group by the votes, and added with urgency, "Quickly now."

Lotus' glare didn't move, but she went quiet and waited for something new.

The numbers were played around with some more, papers swapped around and small mutterings between Pisces, Seven, June, and Junpei being said. Santa focused on keeping distance from Lotus, but wore a grin. Ace worked on trying to calm Lotus. It didn't go very well, but she wasn't about to attack Santa again, at the very least. If it bought Santa some more life, it worked well enough.

After a minute or two of deliberation, June suddenly spoke loud enough for everyone to hear.

"I think I have an answer. Can I move the papers around?" She looked to the other three. They shifted aside to allow her room. Some ruffling later, and her solution was presented, with Junpei's marker acting as the number 9 bracelet. 3, 6, and 2 would go to Door 2, and 7, 8, and the 9th bracelet would go through Door 6. She turned to the others for approval after she read it aloud.

Everyone seemed to agree.

Santa couldn't do anything but help himself to one final remark, saying, "Seven should be able to restrain the old lady at least, right?"

Disapproving looks were given, and Lotus' anger flared up again. Without missing a beat, she shot back, "The real thing that needs restraining is your mouth."

For the first time in a long while, Clover spoke, and it was simply, "At least he's got more balls than Seven."

Seven turned around to her. "You wanna say that again?"

"This again." Junpei sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

Clover ignored him. "Santa's less than half your size and he's got bigger balls than you!"

"You trying to get this fight done before we go through these doors?" Seven took a threatening step toward her.

"Unless you think you're going to lose and want to back off now!"

"Let's fight, half-pint!"

"Rhyming isn't going to help you much now!"

"Stop it." It was Ace again. "We're living on borrowed time. Please, save your arguments for once we've escaped this ship."

Reluctantly, they turned away with grumbles.

With that dealt with, Ace looked to the rest of the players. "Shall we split into our groups and get going, then? Unless someone has a protest to the new arrangement."

No one said much of anything. They all shuffled around to their groups, passed around items needed, and gave one last look to each other before splitting apart. Everyone was fairly quiet, and the quiet continued through walking.

It was unnerving to Pisces. He glanced to June and Santa walking beside him to Door 2, both saying nothing. They looked… unhappy. Unreasonably so for not going to Door 6. Was it because of the atmosphere of how the group had come apart? Santa didn't seem like one who might be affected by that. June, maybe, but they both look like someone had just condemned them to a life of an unpleasant task.

Or maybe it was the game catching up to them. He himself hadn't been there from the start, and while he knew what happened- had _seen_ what could happen -it wasn't a replacement for living it. He might never understand that.

Then again, he didn't want to. He didn't want to experience _any_ of the Nonary Game for himself. He didn't want to... and he still had forced those kids to. That was something he could never truly wipe off his conscious. He couldn't imagine what the effects had been on those children if he was given hell by only being a witness. But Clover was one of those children, wasn't she? She seemed all right, ignoring how upset she was over her missing brother. But, it wasn't like he knew her personal life. He didn't know _anything _about her. He couldn't really judge how she might be.

He released the cheek he didn't realise he was chewing as the two came up to Door 2.

"This is the door you and Ace found, right?" June asked, speaking the first word in a long while. She sounded not much different, but her expression told something completely opposite. She kept her gaze staring at nothing, with a hand fisted and resting on her jaw.

"Yeah… We couldn't gather much from it, though." He stared at the door. "It wasn't like we could open it, and there's not much on this side of the door."

"It's… kind of weird if you think about it, though."

"It's a numbered door," Santa butted in. "How is it weird? Unless you're talking about the game as a whole."

"No, not that," she corrected. "I mean… how this place isn't flooded."

Santa paused from reaching for the door and looked over. "What do you mean?"

"Well… Think about it." She turned around. "That elevator didn't go up. It went down. But the D-Deck is entirely flooded. Why do you think that is?"

He stared at her for a long moment before looking away. "I dunno. What does it matter, anyways? We're still down here, and… And…" He let out a frustrated sigh. "Can we just go?"

"Quite a turn from provoking Lotus," Pisces noted, but put his hand on the scanner.

Santa did as well. "We don't have time to be messing around anymore. We should be finding Door 9 soon, so let's just focus on that."

The group didn't move for several moments after that. Santa turned to June and asked with a bit of sharpness, "You going to scan?"

She continued to stand there for a moment, and then said, "Yes." She put her hand on the panel, and grabbed the lever. "Are we ready?"

The other two gave some kind of a "Yes". June pulled the lever down. The doors swung slowly open, letting out a hideous noise as they did. A quick look was shared between the three, and they looked in, seeing only a long hallway. They then ran in. The door would be closing soon.

They didn't go very far. The DEAD was just on the inside of the door, down the hall a few paces. The three followed by slamming their hands on the device, and Santa yanked down the lever. A second later, and the pink skull that had appeared faded away.

Though he'd already gone through it once, Pisces found himself releasing a shaking breath and leaning against the nearby wall.

"You don't get used to that," Santa said, holding an arm while eyeing his bracelet. He took a deep breath, trying to compose himself.

"I don't… want to get used to that," Pisces replied before pushing off the wall. "But this should be the last time, right? Unless Door 9 wants us to scan as well."

"What do you think is even behind Door 9?" June asked, pulling herself from looking around the hall.

Santa was the one to answer, surprisingly. "Depends on where it is. If it's at the top, probably just the deck of the ship. The group that went to Door 1 would find Door 9 first in that case, but they can't go through it. And if it's somewhere down here, well…" He looked up to the ceiling. "There's either a big ass staircase or an elevator."

"Let's hope it's the latter, then, right?"

"I'd prefer an elevator if you don't mind."

June paused, and then laughed. Santa gave a grin. Even Pisces managed some sort of a smile, however faint.

"That was a bad joke," June said through her giggles.

Pisces joined in now, saying, "Believe me, it's better than some jokes I've heard."

"I'm a bit worried if that's the case."

"I'm worried for their humour. It's more bland than a white sheet of paper."

Another small laugh from June. "Well, maybe try to enjoy the next one you hear when we get out of here."

The amusement in Pisces' eyes dulled, and he mumbled, "Yeah," before looking around. "Where are we, anyways?"

The other two took a quick look around as well. Santa came up to a door in one of the hallways and tested it, opening it up. He peered in. "It… looks like some kind of a holding room."

June appeared next to him. "It looks so dirty in there!" She made a face. "Did Zero forget to clean it?"

Santa entered, June and Pisces following, and looked around. "Nah… I think it's this way on purpose. They look kind of like," he paused for a word, "confinement rooms. Like they're dirty to show how bad you've been, or something."

Pisces peered behind a partition and backed away, saying, "Oh, gross!"

Santa looked at what was there. "It's just a dirty toilet."

"I'm not getting near that," he said, and moved away while shaking his head. "I don't want to know what that thing has seen."

"It'd be convenient if someone was sick," June thought aloud. When Santa gave her a questioning look, she explained, "Well, this is a hospital ship, right? So maybe if people are really sick, they can be quarantined here."

"Seems kinda weird to hold sick people in a dirty place. And that bed is about as good as the ones in the big room." Santa indicated to it. "This is more like a place you'd put prisoners in."

"Prisoners?!" She looked startled. "What kind of prisoners would you be taking on a hospital ship?"

"Didn't Seven say something about this being used in World War One?" Santa began to exit the room. "Wartime prisoners or captured people, probably."

She followed him out. "That doesn't seem right. You shouldn't be treating prisoners like this, no matter who they are. I'm not saying put them in something like the first-class cabin, but-"

"But this is cruel," Pisces finished, calling from a door down the hall. "War isn't nice, though. Either way, I don't think this ship's been used since then. If I had to guess, this whole game took a long time to make. The ship has probably been out of commission for a while."

"Maybe…" She walked over. "What are you looking at, anyways?"

"This door." He pointed to it. On it, it said the word, "EMERGENCE".

She reached a hand up to it, pressing on one of the tiles. Her hand moved up, and the "C" tile popped out. She caught it in surprise and looked at it before putting it back. She then asked, "Do you think we need to take out certain tiles to open the door?"

"Maybe, but how many? Which ones?" Pisces looked back to the hallway with doors. "We can come back to it later. I think we'll find clues if we look around."

As if on cue, Santa walked out of the farthest door, saying, "It's too damn dark to see anything in there. Let's check out these first couple of rooms first. Maybe there's a flashlight or something in 'em."

And with that, the group divided. June entered the center door while Pisces and Santa decided to investigate the first one.

Pisces started by looking at a sink. He tested the handle, turning it all the way in both directions. Nothing happened.

"Sink's broke," he concluded aloud.

Santa looked over, checking the sink. "It looks like something's blocking the drain. Maybe it turned off the sink as well?"

"Maybe…" His gaze moved up, settling on the mirror. On it was a sideways oval, coloured blue with lighter and darker streaks circling around to the center. "And then there's this weird thing. It kind of reminds me of a whirlpool."

"I was thinking it was like one of those things you use to hypnotise people."

Pisces looked over, a bit alarmed. "Are you suggesting they were using hypnosis on whoever was in here?"

"Maybe, maybe not." He shrugged. "It looks like a dead end either way." And with that said, he moved towards the toilet.

Pisces faced it again and reached out, seeing if it would come off. It didn't, of course. Santa was right. There wasn't much to be done with the mirrors. They were a hint, he recalled, indicating how to get the tile out. But Hongou had said to act as though he knew nothing.

Hongou… Were they holding up all right? They certainly seemed to have things under control, but there were no doubt many thoughts they were considering. Nijisaki could really only guess some of them.

But he had to wonder why they hadn't decided to go to Door 2. He thought it was fairly obvious. It would allow the two to go together. They only needed Lotus, and she actually had wanted to go to this door. Or maybe they'd wanted to wave away suspicion? But if that was the case, why hadn't they told him?

_It was probably to be sure I didn't try anything like saying I wanted Door 1,_ he reasoned. _I fit best just going here._

"Trying to get a good view of yourself?" Santa asked, looking over. "The mirror's kinda dirty and painted on, though. You won't get very far."

Pisces let go of the mirror. "No, I just… zoned out." He turned to Santa. "Find anything?"

Santa presented him with a thin, small, metal pole. "It looks like a screwdriver head. Kinda useless without a handle, but it's probably somewhere. That, and come look at this weird thing." He walked back toward the toilet, and indicated toward whatever it was when Pisces came over. It was a sun symbol, put on the inside of the lid of the toilet.

"It isn't like the sun sign we've seen before. I wonder what it means." Santa then realised something and looked at Pisces. "Were you told about the planet keys?"

He nodded. "I asked about it when we found the Mercury Keycard. Ace explained that there were several doors and elevators around marked with planetary symbols. They each had a corresponding key, literal or card form. Why the sun, though?" He looked back at the toilet. "Why not use Pluto?"

"Come on, are you kidding me?" Santa raised his eyebrows. "Pluto's not a planet. It's a dwarf planet."

"I still don't understand why they even declared that."

Santa took in a breath, and Pisces quickly cut him off.

"Don't explain."

The breath was released.

"I'm assuming you've explained this a lot?"

"Yeah, I did." Santa looked to the side. "I… had a sister. She was really stubborn about Pluto being a planet, even though I told her a thousand times why it wasn't."

A new voice joined in now. "Well your sister was right."

The two looked over. June had entered, unnoticed.

"No she wasn't," Santa answered. "Pluto doesn't fit what makes a planet a planet."

June would not be swayed. "And what even defines a planet? Science is wrong all the time, you know. If new discoveries come about, they need to change their definitions."

"All right. So Pluto's a planet." He turned to her now, hands entering his pockets. "So is Eris, and Ceres, and well why not Triton why we're at it? You know what else? Let's change the definition of chair while we're going on with this." He pointed to a towel in June's hands. "That is now also qualified as a chair." He pointed to the partition. "That too."

"They don't even fit the criteria of a chair," she argued.

"Nor does Pluto for a planet!"

"Well if new science comes about that says it is, why are you denying it?"

"And new science _hasn't _come out. Just like new science hasn't come out saying that a towel or a mini-wall is a chair."

"Stop _bickering!_" Pisces finally broke in. "Are you both children?!"

Santa turned back to the toilet with a dismissing and agitated noise.

Pisces rolled his eyes and came to June. "Why are you here, anyways?"

She showed him the towel. "I found this, and wanted to check something."

He looked it over. "The bottom of it looks like the pattern on the mirror."

She nodded. "And the top part is on the mirror in the other room."

"What do you think it means?"

She let out a small hum of thought, looking from the mirror to the towel and back again. "I'm not sure... "

"I have no idea either."

_Liar._

But it was necessary. He didn't particularly want to. June seemed like someone who wouldn't be bad to ally with, but not to a point where he'd reveal anything about knowing the game. No one could know that. If they did, who knew if he'd be able to leave?

June folded the towel. "I'll keep looking. But, do either of you have a screwdriver or something?"

The long-forgotten tool in his pocket was suddenly very noticeable to Pisces. "What for?"

"I found this drawer, and I need to take the handle off of it. The sink doesn't have a knob, and the handle on the drawer looks weird. I think it's supposed to be for the sink."

Santa emerged from behind the partition. "Well, I think I just made one. The handle for the toilet flushing thing came off and fits with the screwdriver bit I found."

"I'll go get the drawer," June said, and set the towel on a nearby desk before leaving the room.

Pisces came up to the desk, and pulled at the drawer. It didn't budge.

Santa came up beside him. "It looks like it's screwed shut." He twirled the screwdriver in hand. "Well, while we're waiting…"

He was about done with the first one when June walked back in. He pulled it out and looked over. "Gimme a sec, I almost got this." He then went back to the drawer and unscrewed the other one before pulling the drawer out.

"And… what was the point of that?" Pisces asked. "It's empty."

Santa looked at him with a mildly annoyed look. "Look, it was screwed shut, all right? It was worth a shot."

June set the drawer from the middle room on the desk, and said, "Maybe we have to put it in somewhere?"

Santa put the drawer back in. Nothing happened. He looked to her again.

"I didn't mean there," she said, not moving under his annoyed look. "I was thinking in the middle room. Can you get the handle off of this drawer while I go try?"

"Yeah, sure." Santa handed the drawer over and picked up the one from the middle room. "This thing's weird… It's got a mirror on it."

"And a strange knob," Pisces reminded. "Let's first get that off."

"Are you in charge now?"

He was in no mood. "Yes. Now, take off the knob."

Santa offered him the screwdriver. "How about you do it, since you're so eager?"

Immediately, Pisces jerked away. "No, I'm not touching that filth!"

Santa let out a sharp "_Ha!"_ and got to taking off the knob. June came in a minute later, holding something in hand.

"What's that?" Pisces asked.

"I'm not sure." She showed it to him. It was a tile with several lines on it coloured grey, blue, and red. The red lines spelled out "14". June talked as he looked it over, saying, "It's about the same size as the tiles on the door. I think we're supposed to replace the tiles on the door with them."

Santa looked up as he pulled the knob off. "Tiles on the door?"

"Yes. There was a door down the hall with the word "emergence" on it." She collected the tile from Pisces and handed it to Santa. "The tiles can be taken off. I thought there might be a clue for to which we need to take off, but it looks like we're going to have to replace them."

Santa squinted at the tile. "Why does it say "Hi" on it?"

June leaned over. "I thought it said 14."

Santa rotated it the other way, and blinked in surprise. "Oh. It says 14." He handed it back to June. "All right. Let's see how many there are to collect, and try that door in a minute. For now…" He handed the knob to June. "You wanted to test the sink, right? The one in here's busted, but maybe that one isn't."

June took it and nodded, walking out. Pisces picked up the remaining drawer, looking at the mirror on it.

"Do you think we need to put it into this space?" Santa asked, tapping the top of the hollow space.

"We don't have a handle to pull it out with. Probably not." Pisces set it back down. "I wonder what it's for."

"Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe Zero felt bad that the actual mirrors are dirty." Santa presented the mirror side to Pisces. "Fix your hair with this."

"I wasn't fixing my hair." Pisces pushed it back down. "I was thinking."

"About what?"

"What is there _not_ to think about?" He looked back to the sink. "My entry to the game was far from normal, and there was a person who was already number 2. Why was I swapped with them?" He looked to Santa again. "What's Zero trying to do?"

"Yeah, I guess you're kinda weird…" Santa touched a hand to the back of his head. "Seems kinda out of place for Zero to do that, you know? There's all these rules and stuff to make sure everything goes right, and then he just switches you and Snake. It doesn't make sense at all." He looked to the side, thinking. "Unless Snake is Zero, but… I dunno. I don't think so. Why put yourself in the game? Why'd he drag in his sister? Man, I don't get this whole thing all in all. There's the risk of dying if we screw up, sure, and yeah, if we don't get out then we drown, but the game isn't that deadly otherwise. The only one who we know's… taken damage is that 9th guy."

"Who was the 9th Man, anyways?" Pisces asked. He'd already asked Hongou, sure, and while he didn't doubt the report, some extra information wouldn't hurt. Information he couldn't have gotten.

Before Santa could reply, the sound of water was heard. They looked over. The sink had filled with water. Pisces came over and reached inside, pulling out the tile.

"It's like the one June collected," he noted.

Santa looked over. "Sure does. I guess that's a second one."

A moment later and June peeked in. "Did anything happen?"

"Yeah," Santa answered. "We got another tile."

"All right. I'm going to keep looking in the room." And she vanished again.

Pisces dried the piece with the towel on the desk and put it in his pocket. He then looked to Santa expectantly, saying, "So?"

Santa raised an eyebrow. "Mystery of the mirrored drawer left, right?"

"Yes, but could you tell me about the 9th Man?"

A hand was shoved into Santa's pocket. "Why do you care so much?"

Pisces paused to think of an answer. "I don't know. I feel like he might be important. A gut feeling?"

"Well… I guess he was kinda weird." Santa looked down for a minute and kicked the dirt on the floor. "He knew how to use the REDs and DEADs, but none of us had been explained how yet. He had this huge stammer, too, and was really shaky, and sweaty, and nervous. He was kind of bossy as well… It seemed like a pretty strong difference given how he looked, but I've seen worse heel-face turns. And when he died, he… he kept saying he was lied to." Santa had looked back up at Pisces by then, but talking about the 9th Man's death made him look away once more. "That he was put in there, that someone killed him, like some kind of external force had possessed him and forced him into the door… Which doesn't make sense since he's the one who wanted to go in alone and was threatening to kill Clover for that, but I don't know. Maybe he was referring to Zero? Was he given some kind of a secret note? I don't know."

Well, this was new information. The 9th Man knew about the REDs and DEADs. A nervous man with an awful stutter…

"Can… you tell me what he looked like?"

Santa looked up. "What, do you think you might know him?"

Pisces froze. He might have been working on an idea, but he couldn't very well say what that was. Still, he gave a slow nod. "But… that's not impossible, right? Ace told me that Clover and Snake were siblings."

"Yeah, and I guess Junpei and June are childhood friends. The rest of us don't have much, but… Well, anyways. He was a little taller than me by a couple inches. He looked like he didn't sleep a lot, but maybe, I dunno, late 20's? He had these big glasses on. He had this really messy and frizzy hair, too. He wore like, 3 shirts and a tie, and this ugly pants. He wore these boots things, too, and some socks probably knee-high. His face was kinda long and hollow, too… Oh, and he didn't even know how to hold a knife!" Santa gave an amused grin and picked up the screwdriver. He put his thumb on one end. "Say this side is the sharp side, right? He had it facing away from Clover's neck." In demonstration, he rotated his hand so his palm was up and his thumb was on the opposite end. "He was holding it like this. Still dangerous, but it's kinda funny to think back to."

Pisces managed a small laugh, but it was fake. Internally, he felt… unpleasant. He didn't have a word for it. He had a damn good guess to who that was.

_Kubota._

It was Kubota from how Santa had described the person. Kubota had been the 9th player, and Hongou and himself were also in this.

"I'm gonna go check out the last room. You said it was dark, but maybe that's part of it." Pisces picked up the drawer. "Thanks for telling me about the 9th Man."

"Draw any conclusions?"

"Yeah. I have no idea who that is. Worth a shot, I guess." Pisces shrugged and walked out, giving a brief goodbye.

Three Cradle executives… Well, sort of. Kubota had quit Cradle. It'd been a couple years after the Nonary Project. Their own paranoia forced them to. But they'd been around for the project. And then there were also Clover and Light here, children from the project.

_What's going on here?_

Nijisaki entered the room, and just sat on the bed. The only one who hadn't appeared so far was Musashidou. Was he the one behind this? Had he given Kubota some kind of lie?

Who _had_ lied, anyways?

His thoughts drifted. He'd replaced Snake… Why? Was Snake, Light, Zero? Clover would have to be in on it. Was she acting all this drama?

Why had he replaced Light?

He'd been drugged to a point where he'd struggled to even walk, let alone talk. He'd been shoved in a dark room. He'd been dressed in Light's clothing. Zero had definitely wanted Hongou to confuse him for Light, but that didn't make sense if he considered that the others would be able to sort him out.

"_That doesn't exactly cover that the others would be able to tell I'm not Snake," a pause on his part, "unless I wasn't meant to be seen by the others."_

"_We don't have enough information to determine that."_

It was such a quick dismissal. Hongou didn't want him to think that way. They didn't want him thinking of what would happen if he wasn't seen.

So he was only meant for Hongou?

Kubota was dead and Light was missing. The one thing the two had in common was the Nonary Project. Zero had tricked Kubota into some kind of an unintentional suicide mission.

Nijisaki's blood ran cold.

_Was Hongou… going to kill me? Thinking I was Light?_

Immediately, his mind worked to disprove it.

_Hold on a moment. Murder? Would Hongou really do that? I've known them for a long time now. That can't be their nature._

There had been times he'd seen things not meant for his eyes. Beyond the smile of Gentarou, the seriousness of Mx. Hongou, something… more. Something private even to him- Maybe even to Hongou's own self. But he'd dismissed it all. A bad mood, likely. An illusion to his mind.

He knew Hongou had a sort of public presense, much like they were acting in this game. But murder? That had to be… unreasonable. Even the Nonary Project, for all of its cruelty, had been set up for everyone to live. Even the incinerator. Just solve a Sudoku puzzle, and the command will shut off.

But all he could think of was the Nonary Project. 9 years prior, when he'd gotten a report from a terrified Kubota that Hongou had seized one of the children who'd escaped via a sly detective and decided to toss her back into the incinerator. He hadn't seen it. He refused to watch any recording of it, if that even existed. He just knew what Kubota had said.

_Sure, Hongou can be irrational when they're mad enough, but they weren't like that when they thought I was Light. They were leading me to the other people. And… And why would they want to kill Light, even if they had it within them to do that?_

Kubota was dead and Light was missing. The one thing the two had in common was the Nonary Project. Hongou had told Nijisaki not to say anything about it.

He shook his head. He didn't like where these thoughts were going. But they came anyways. All he could do was sit there and stare at nothing.

_Would Hongou have killed Light to keep him quiet? He knows what happened 9 years ago, but why would he reveal that?_

_I wasn't supposed to be seen by the other people, or was I? If Light really is Zero, did he want the others to know about Hongou's face blindness? Was that the point of the trick? I can't imagine how he'd even find out about that, though. It's a secret only really learned through accident._

Light was an esper though, and Cradle had only touched the surface of what the fields were capable of. Had Light picked up something through them?

Either way, the idea that he'd been intended to be seen by the others was comforting. It would've set up something very bad for Hongou, but Hongou wouldn't just kill someone like that. Nijisaki just wouldn't buy it. After all, Clover wasn't dead. And Hongou could've even killed _him _in the shower room if they wanted to keep people quiet through death.

Nijisaki took a long breath. That solved the mystery of why he was swapped with Light. Zero had wanted people to find out about Hongou's face blindness. They'd present him as Light, and it'd be too hard to cover up a mistake like that. Whoever was doing this held a lot of spite toward Cradle. It only framed Light further.

Slowly, Nijisaki stood up. He couldn't be deliberating any longer. He'd reached good conclusions, and now it was time to escape. He picked up the mirrored drawer, and stood in the light, aiming it at the two mirrors. The one on the left reflected light to show the numbers 4 and 7. The one on the right reflected light to showed a sun and a moon symbol.

From there, Pisces left the room, coming back to the first one to report his findings. However, it was empty. He tried the second one, and found Santa sitting next to June. She was lying on the bed, looking to be in pain.

Pisces froze where he was. "What happened?"

Santa looked up with a bit of a glare, saying sarcastically, "She touched the toilet." He then sighed and explained, "Her fever started up again."

"Fever…?"

"Oh, I guess you weren't here for it… June has this fever apparently. It'll spike up randomly, but it seems to be getting worse." Santa rubbed her arm. She didn't respond. "I came in and she'd basically collapsed on the floor."

"Is she going to be all right?"

Santa didn't meet his eye. "I don't know. She'd gotten better in the past, but it wasn't this bad. The most we can do is just leave her be for now."

Pisces gave a slow nod, eyeing June before looking at Santa again. "All right, well, I think I found a clue of some sort."

Santa stood up. "What's that?"

"Symbols and numbers. I reflected the light that was in the third room onto the mirrors. The one on the left showed the numbers 4 and 7, and the one on the right showed the symbols the sun and the moon." Pisces glanced to the toilet. "The sun symbol was the same as what we saw on the lid in the other room."

Santa came over to the toilet, and lifted the lid. It showed a moon symbol. He thought it over, and turned around, asking, "It was 4 and 7 in that order? And sun and moon in that order?"

Pisces nodded.

Santa went back to the toilet, this time grabbing the handle. He then proceeded to pull on it a set of seven times, one right after the last once the toilet was done flushing. When the seven had been done, a click was heard.

"Thought so," Santa said. He pulled away from the toilet. "I think we need to do the sun one four times. Can you take care of it?"

"You want me to _touch part of the toilet?_"

"Grab it with the towel. I wanna make sure June is all right." And Santa allowed no more protest, coming over and sitting down next to her.

Pisces didn't even attempt to muffle his sigh as he turned away and went into the other room. The towel was picked up, and the chain for the toilet was pulled four times. A click was heard thereafter. Once it was done, Pisces backed quickly away, making a face that seemed like he'd just trekked through a dumpster.

He came back into the other room, and Santa looked up, asking, "What happened?"

"I pulled it four times, and a click was heard."

Santa mulled over that for a bit. "What do you think it was? Besides something unlocking. Notice anything we haven't looked at, yet?"

If Nijisaki could recall right, this exercise unlocked the drawer in the dark room. So he nodded. "There was one thing in the dark room I remember."

"I'll leave you to it, then." Santa turned back to the sickly June.

Before Pisces left, he took a minute to look at her. She was putting forth an effort to breathe. That, or she was just focusing on it alone. Her face was literally red, and he couldn't imagine how hot her forehead must be.

_But she'll be all right, won't she?_

Pisces went to the dark room assuming so, and opened the drawer. He pulled out the two pieces, and came back, reporting his findings to Santa.

"Was that it? I don't know how we're supposed to find out what these mean."

Pisces looked at them. "There's four of them. The word "EMERGENCE"... It has four Es, doesn't it? So maybe we replace the Es with these tiles?"

"Maybe. Why do they say "14", though?" Santa held his hand out for one, and examined it upon it being given to him. "14 and E… There was something like this in the kitchen."

"What was that?"

"Hexadecimal or something." Santa shrugged. "I didn't really listen. It was too confusing, but I remember Lotus saying that E was 14 in it."

"So the 14 was something only people who went through the kitchen would know." Pisces retrieved the other one from his pocket. "Well, it confirms our theory."

"Yeah, but…" Santa glanced to June. "We can't get very far without her up and running. We have to wait until she's on her feet again."

Pisces nodded and leaned against the desk. That was it for now, then.


	4. OPTION: Door 1 (Part 2)

In charge of the wheelhouse… Of course Junpei had to say that. He couldn't just make things a little easier and have them be in the chart room. Clover was selectively talkative and still acting quite reserved. She was essentially useless.

Maybe that's why Junpei had stayed with her. Gentarou threw half a look back. He'd turned to her, asking her something. She didn't really respond. She just shook her head and moved away to start searching around.

Either way, they needed that pocketwatch, and they'd be damned if they weren't going to get their hands on it. They couldn't risk these two seeing whoever was in the captain's quarters. But… It'd be suspicious if they started just pilfering through the chart room now.

_Damn you, Junpei._

The only reasonable thing they could think of doing was just waiting until someone picked it up. From there, they could ask to see it. That wasn't unreasonable, was it? If anyone asked, there was the defense of the door, and so long as they put the hands back, it could be seen as them simply coming to no conclusions. Nothing could really be done in the wheelhouse until the chart room had been investigated.

It was risky. It was immensely risky, but when they saw Junpei flipping the watch over in his hands, they knew they had to act.

"Oh, a pocket watch."

Junpei jumped and nearly dropped the thing.

A small laugh came out of Ace. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you."

He turned around, and gave a nod while breathing out and smiling tensely. "It's all right. What's up?"

"Might I take a look at that?"

"Uh, yeah." His words were treated with a shrug. Junpei handed it over. "What are you doing here, anyways? Find something for it?"

"Something like that," they answered vaguely, and pocketed the watch. "I wanted to make sure you have everything under control." Their voice got softer as they explained, "Clover still seems quite upset. I understand why, but… it's worrying."

From the opposite side of the room, Clover looked up with a glare. "I can hear you."

The two froze, and Ace called out, "My apologies." They looked back to Junpei and gave a nod, saying, "I'll leave you two to it, then."

And with that, they turned away, leaving them be. They could hear Junpei and Clover saying something, but they didn't focus on it. They just looked at the watch and began to set it to the time they needed: 10 seconds past 3'o clock. Once that was done, they put it into the lock. A beep signaled the open door, and the lock changed to say "OPEN".

They looked back. Clover and Junpei were still talking. If any of them decided to come over before they left the room, it'd be all over. So they pushed open the door and decided to be quick about it. They'd long decided whoever was in there was going to die.

Who was it, anyways? Teruaki's presense and the fact that everything had been set up for them to kill Nijisaki… It made Gentarou wonder if this last person was Musashidou. It was the only one they could reasonably deduce. He was the only one missing, and he was the only one they could imagine that could, as Zero said, confess to something involving the Nonary Project.

They opened the door to the quarters, leaving the communications office be. Their steps slowed, and they looked inside the room.

In a chair too small for him sat a man, dressed like what might be a captain's outfit. His hands were rubbing his eyes, and on his left wrist was a numbered bracelet. It said "0". Gentarou's eyes narrowed a bit. How taunting Zero was. It was like a mark left there just to piss them off.

Another thing that didn't escape Gentarou's attention was an axe on the floor. It was simple, made up of a wooden handle and a red head. They'd been considering using their knife, but the bulk of the man discouraged that. It wasn't a very large knife. An axe would be more convenient.

_But why is it here? And who exactly is this?_

Their answer to the latter came in the form of the man mumbling out, "Hongou?"

The mustache the man wore was general, but familiar nonetheless. That voice, however groggy, confirmed what Gentarou had believed true.

"Musashidou."

Gentarou had played with the idea that the Nonary Game might be Musashidou's doing, but ruled against it now. This was a third party, and someone who had quite the grudge.

_Then, it follows that I'm meant to kill Musashidou, as I was Nijisaki._

But this time around, they weren't going to risk anything. They should have killed Nijisaki when they had the chance, but they'd hesitated and were now paying the price. They have the chance to kill Musashidou, and they were going to take it.

The man was asking something about what was going on. Gentarou's voice was calm and level as they answered, explaining things in a more roundabout way. People were trapped on a ship and were looking for lifeboats. They'd been there a while. Some people were injured.

As they talked, they took off their coat, not really caring what impression it left on Musashidou. They turned it inside out, and put it back on, shifting it so it was as closed as they could really manage. Their sleeves were pulled up. It was a shoddy protection from blood spatters, but it would have to do. They walked forward and pushed Musashidou back in his chair when he tried to stand.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

Gentarou crouched down and picked up the axe, standing back up. "Fixing a problem," they answered, talking like they were reluctantly reading a script aloud. Their words finished with them raising the axe, and driving it down into Musashidou's heart. The blow was strong enough to dive the axe right in, a sickening sound hitting the air. They looked down at him, giving an expression like a parent who just finished telling their child a bedtime story, but was only answered with a face of frozen terror. The axe was pulled free a moment later. Musashidou began to collapse forward with it. Gentarou quickly seized him and stepped back. They couldn't very well risk anything getting on their feet. Their arms and upper body were bad enough.

They questioned if it would be wise to just let him drop onto the ground. It would certainly be what was easiest, but it'd be a bit obvious as to what transpired here. So instead, they began to pull away from the chair, not letting go of Musashidou. Their back neared the wall the chair was facing, and they tossed Musashidou onto the ground so he faced the tripod. More or less, anyways. They then shifted his arms and hands a bit. For how he was, it looked like he'd tried crawling away or something. Considering that Gentarou was probably low on time by now, it would have to do. The axe was tossed onto the ground beside Musashidou's body. Gentarou then raised their thumb to their mouth and licked it before quickly working away at the blood on their hands. It wasn't a lot, thankfully. They then moved away as blood started to move toward their feet. They took off their coat, put it back, rolled down their sleeves, and left.

That was one issue solved. Next was returning the pocketwatch. They'd need to come up with something, and quick. At the very least, they took the pocketwatch off the lock, set it back to about 39 seconds after 10:05, and put it back in to relock the door. When the lock turned red and said "LOCK", they pulled it out and put it into their pocket for now. They then came to the chart room door to hear what the other two were doing.

They were still talking, but sounded deep in discussion.

"I don't think he's Zero, though." That was Junpei.

"... No, I don't either. I think Zero is… one of the people playing, but not him." Clover's turn. Her voice was quiet, and hard to hear.

"One of us? What do you mean? Why would Zero play along side us?"

She grew annoyed. "If you can't even figure that out yourself, I don't think you're going to get it when I explain it to you."

"All right, all right. I'll take your word for it. Zero is one of us. … I mean it. Who do you think Zero is?"

There was no answer for Clover.

"... Look, I really didn't mean to make you mad-"

"Shut up for a second!"

There was another long silence. Clover broke it when she was ready.

"I know Pisces."

"You said that in the hospital room."

"Well duh! Because I do! I mean we've met before. Not… a lot. We aren't friends, or else I'd know him right away."

"Do you know who he is?"

"I… Not yet, but I almost have it. I just need to think a little bit more, or see him one more time, and I'm sure I'll get it. I just… need to remember his name, and it'll come together. His name… His name was-"

Ace walked in, the door opening. Clover had a hand by her mouth and was staring at something with eyebrows furrowed. Junpei was waiting patiently. Both, however, jumped as Ace came in, and Clover now glared at them.

"Have I… interrupted something?" they asked, looking between the two.

Neither responded for several moments before Junpei finally asked, "What do you want?"

"There was something I wanted to speak to you about, Junpei. Could you come with me for a moment?" Anything to end that conversation. They turned away and moved back into the wheelhouse, waiting for Junpei.

They needed to return the pocketwatch, but what could they do? Just hand it back like "Here you go, I finished killing who I needed to"? Absolutely not. They didn't even really have anything to talk about, but here was Junpei walking in.

And then they recalled a small little detail- A moment's pause, a shuffle of hands, before Junpei had called his vote. Gentarou put their hand back in their pocket and held the watch.

"What did you want to talk about?" Junpei asked, walking over.

Ace couldn't hide the self-confident leaning smile they wanted to wear, and said, "There's something I wanted to… check."

Junpei glanced back to the door. "Oh yeah? What's that?"

"If you'll excuse me…" And with that, Ace was in motion, suddenly putting their hand into Junpei's pocket.

"H-Hey! What the hell are you doing?!" Junpei tried to stop them, but it was too late. In a quick motion, the pocketwatch was dropped inside, and papers inside of it were seized. Ace looked at the crumpled balls.

"Just as I thought." They looked up. "You switched them, didn't you? When we voted." Junpei gave no response, so Ace continued. "Ah well. I can't say that I care. I managed to get through the numbered door I wanted, despite your mischief."

Junpei was stunned. He struggled for words. "When… Why did you…"

"Oh, simply curiosity. I hope you won't think ill of me for it." They gave a more genuine smile and patted Junpei on the shoulder in a friendly manner. They then went off to a deeper section of the wheelhouse.

The papers were put in their pocket. Switched votes… Only they could manage to pick up on something like that. Santa had been suspicious of Junpei, but could he have applied such a clue to be useful? Likely not.

They let their smile die away and their attention focus on one of the machines in the ship as Junpei walked in to help them.

* * *

><p>June was the first one to speak as the three came down a staircase.<p>

"So… what is this place?"

Pisces took a minute to look around. It was what was dubbed as the torture room, but it was unused. It's namesake was just for how it was set up. Still, the room always made him uneasy. Surrounded by all these tools designed for nothing more than pain… He walked in with reluctance as Santa yelled at him to move. Santa came down the stairs after him, but stopped.

"I don't know what this place is, but I don't like it." Santa held his arms to him. "It's givin' me more creeps than the confinement rooms."

Pisces looked up from eyeing equipment on a table. "Should we even bother with the door over there? We haven't been able to just escape before."

June went over anyways. "I'm not seeing anything like a key or a lock…" She tested the door, and faced the other two. "There's a bunch of machinery around. Do you think we need to use it to unlock the door?"

Pisces began to move to a green panel by the central chair. "Maybe…"

Santa popped up next to him. "What's that?"

"It's got some writing on it," he explained. "It says… "This device will conduct the experiment. Once the experiment has been completed, the door will unlock"." He looked back over to June, who was coming down the stairs. "It looks like you were right. What this experiment is, though, is beyond me."

Santa tapped on the screen, and it scrolled. He lightly hit Pisces' arm. "Check this out."

Pisces looked back to it. "... "First, adjust the switches to match the blocks in the sample above." This thing is…"

"Freaky," Santa finished. "It's… It's right next to a torture chair. I dunno what it does, but uh… Let's just come back to it in a minute, all right?" Without waiting for a response, he moved away and began to look at the table Pisces had been examining earlier.

Pisces didn't move. The screen was pressed again, and it showed the puzzle. Above and below, divided by a line, was the backside of a head. On the top screen, the head had blocks in it. In the bottom, it had no blocks, but four switches in the corners of the bottom side that said "On" and "Off".

Quick work was made of it. Pisces turned all but the top right on, and the two were matched. In the corner, he pressed a "Check" button. The machine beeped as something saying "OK" appeared on it in green.

Santa spun around and nearly dropped the wrench in his hand. "The hell was that?"

"I… solved the puzzle of this." Pisces watched as the screen gave new instructions. "Now it's saying it's… going to execution phase."

"Execution?! Isn't that killing someone?!"

June turned around from a control panel to the side. "It can also mean going through with an action. You execute something… You do something. Like… the government might execute a law, or a business might execute a bunch of new policies."

"Either way," Pisces broke in, "this obviously has some relevance to getting out. We need to do it regardless." He looked down. "It says… it needs data from a subject. Once preparation is finished, we need to seat the subject in the chair."

Santa began to walk over to June, raising an eyebrow. "I am _not_ sitting in that." He side-eyed the chair. "I'd like to leave this ship."

Neither commented, and June asked, "What preparation is it talking about?"

Pisces went back to reading. "We need to… fill the disposal tank. We need to put water in it."

"Disposal?!" Santa echoed. "Of what, a dead body after it zaps us to death? I thought you said we solved the puzzle!"

Pisces let out a sigh. "I did. There must be more to it."

Santa crouched down by a large pipe, wrench in hand. "Man, I say just leave it."

"And stay here?"

"No."

"Then how do you plan to get out?"

Santa looked up from the pipe he was taking the lid off of. He knocked on it. "Let's climb through this."

Pisces stared at him with a straight face before rolling his eyes and turning to June. "Can you try something over there? There doesn't seem to be any controls for filling this… tank over here."

June nodded and faced what was before her. She grabbed a yellow lever and pulled down. The sound of rushing water was heard, and slowly, the floor below the chair lit up as water filled it. Pisces jumped away, and the three exchanged a panicked look.

"That's… water, right?" Santa asked.

June nodded. "I think so."

"That isn't water… _coming for us,_ is it?"

"I… think it's below us."

Pisces came over to the glass floor under the chair. "Yeah, I can see water-" His words cut off with a frightened shout, and something bumped against the glass. The other two came over. The underside of a shark had pressed against the glass.

Santa was the first to start conversation again. "Is it dead?"

"I… think so," Pisces answered after another bout of silence. "It's not moving, at least."

June was the daredevil of the group, actually walking on the glass and looking down at the shark. "It's got letters on its stomach. They say… EDBF." She put a fist on her cheek and leaned on it, thinking. "EDBF… I'm going to try something." She turned away, and went back to the panel. The sounds of buttons being clicked was heard, and a moment later, what could only be described as something electrical coming to life was heard.

She turned around, smiling. "There were letters with buttons on them. I pressed the ones on the shark's stomach in that order."

"Yeah, but…" Santa looked around. "What'd you do?"

Pisces moved quickly back over to the green screen he was examining earlier. "It looks like preparation is complete. We just need to unlock the chair and seat someone in it." He looked at Santa and June. "I'm not getting anything to unlock the chair with. Is there something on the control panel?"

June turned around and got to work. Santa went back to the pipe, and shoved an arm inside. After a bit of feeling around, he pulled out his arm with a shout. Both looked over, alarmed, and he gave a grin while showing a key in hand.

"Gotcha."

Once more, Pisces answered him with a blank look. June laughed a bit. Santa joined her even louder before saying, "Tough crowd. All right." He came to the chair. "It looks like this is the key for it. Let me just…" He undid the locks, and stepped away. "There we go." He turned to Pisces. "You can sit now."

"Excuse me?"

"Well, I'm not sitting in it, and June's got a fever. You can take the chair." He patted the seat of it. "Come on, fish-boy."

Pisces answered him with a disgusted face. Santa muttered an, "Oh come on," before coming over and seizing the other. With a hard yank, Pisces was pulled toward the chair and manhandled into it. Before he could get out, Santa was careful to put down the straps on his wrists. He couldn't help a grin, whereas June just looked very startled and somewhat afraid.

"I didn't agree to this," Pisces huffed.

"We're trapped on a death ship, and you're worried about a torture chair." Santa looked amused over all else. "Hey, at least if you're electrocuted, you'll have a fast death. The rest of us have drowning to look forward to."

Santa was given nothing more than an icy glare in reply. He seemed to take the hint, and finished the rest of the restraints before coming to the panel.

"Looks like there's another puzzle."

Pisces looked over as best as he could. "Try not to mess up on purpose."

June joined Santa, saying, "I don't think Zero would set up something like this to kill us."

"What makes you say that?" Santa raised an eyebrow.

"Well… think about it. So far, Zero's only made it so we die if we break one of the rules or if we run out of time." She tapped the control panel. "Why would he change that now?"

"... I guess." Santa looked at Pisces. "Hear that? Maybe we'll get to see what kind of a fish you really are after all."

"Shut up and finish this already," Pisces snapped in reply.

"All right, all right." Santa looked down. "What is this…"

And thus began an extremely uncomfortable five minutes or so of Santa and June playing around on the screen. Pisces tried to keep quiet and let them work, but as soon as Santa called out that it was finished, he gave in to his urges and said, "Can we get me out of this thing, then?"

Santa pressed a button on the monitor, and it beeped a few times before a loud clang was heard. He then made his way back to the chair, saying, "Looks like the door is unlocked." He hesitated before releasing Pisces, though, and asked, "You aren't going to go Lotus on me when I let you out, are you?"

"Get me out now, and I'll forgive your mishap."

"Deal."

Pisces was soon out and moving quickly away from the chair. Santa pocketed the Sun Key, but he didn't move, compared to the other two who were already at the door. June was the first to call to him.

"Are you coming, Santa?"

"In… a minute, yeah." He stared at the chair. "I was just thinking of something."

June walked to the railing while Pisces folded his arms. She leaned on the rails, and asked, "What were you thinking about?"

"Well…" Santa shoved his hands in his pockets. "We've got confinement rooms, a torture place, a hospital, a lab, an operating room… Who's to say this ship wasn't just one giant torture facility? Anyone who got into too bad of a state was sent to the hospital room and operated on. You know, to keep 'em alive. Anyone too stubborn or needing a lot of it was sent to the confinement rooms, and people who acted good were sent to better rooms…"

"Oh, don't be ridiculous," Pisces spoke up. "A giant torture facility? Just look at this room. All of this is beyond old. Zero probably put it here for show."

"Show, yeah… But what about before that?" Santa looked over to Pisces. "Who says Zero put this here over leaving it here, as a reminder of the past?"

"I doubt it. You're just being too suspicious." Pisces let his arms fall. "It makes more sense if we go with the idea that they kept war prisoners here. This room was used to get information out of enemies."

"Well… Isn't this torture? The Nonary Game?"

That seemed to catch him off guard. "What do you mean?"

"Not physically, unless you count the explosions, but psychologically." Santa directed his gaze at the chair again. "We look fine now. We're nervous, we're snappy, but we're still joking and getting through things. Well, June's got a fever, but you know what I mean. We're fine despite the situation. But what about when we leave? You didn't see it, but someone literally exploded right next to us, with only a door to stop our view. It didn't block sound that well. We all saw the body, if you want to call it that, and some people even went through that door. And we're all under a lot of strain and stress, even if we're showing like we're not. Are we really going to leave this and just be okay? After death has slapped us in the face more times than I feel like counting? Are we even going to be the same people?"

Pisces shifted uncomfortably, and gave a desperate glance to June. Anything to get the focus off of Santa. But she didn't respond. She just watched Santa with that troubled look like she'd had before she entered Door 2.

Santa didn't go quiet, either. "Stuff like this can really change people. They go through Hell, and Hell spits them back out as something you aren't even sure you can call the same thing. They have the same name, and face, and history, but they're so different that you wouldn't even question it if the other things were different. … I've seen people walk through Hell and come back as things you couldn't convince me they were the same if you only gave me personality. And they shift, and they change, even beyond when they're back, and they become so strange and alien-like to you. You try to adapt and keep up, and maybe you actually maintain what you had before, but it's never the same. It can never be the same. And you're absolutely helpless to stop it."

Finally, he went quiet, just glaring at the chair. June pulled away from the railing, giving Pisces a tense smile. Pisces rubbed the back of his neck, and tried to smile back, but it was overly obvious that it wasn't genuine.

After a minute of air tense enough to cut, Santa broke away and began heading toward the door. "Let's get going. We have another planet key. It might lead us to Door 9, and we only had 3 hours left when we first came to Door 2."

Neither of them moved at first, but when Santa pulled open the door, the others followed

* * *

><p>They were running. Gentarou could help but find mild disgust in the activity. They were never a runner. They'd never liked it and still didn't. They could run for short distances, but turning down the corner after Junpei, they were quickly reminded just how long this hallway actually was. Of course they all couldn't just walk for once. That'd be too easy.<p>

No, it made sense that they'd run. They weren't quite sure how much time had passed since the group had first entered the room, and they'd only had 3 hours back then. Gentarou hadn't heard the clock's bell, but then again, they'd missed several.

When they reached Junpei, who'd stopped and dropped onto the ground, they were breathing hard and struggling for words. The younger man looked up from a paper in his hands and showed it to them. They looked it over briefly. It was a map of the A-Deck. They nodded to Junpei, and it was shoved in Junpei's pocket. Ace then took off running again.

And running, and running, and running… and finally, they reached the door. They came to a stop by it, putting a hand on it and taking the moment of Junpei's absense to catch up on their breathing. And it was a bit into that when they realised that Junpei wasn't just being slow, he'd entirely vanished from the hall. As best as they could, they took in a breath and called out, "Hey! Junpei, Clover! What are you two doing?! Hurry up!" They then took a moment to realise they should've worded that to sound less rude, but it was pointless anyways. Clover's pink hair was soon visible from around the corner, and Junpei followed a bit after. They caught up in little time at all.

_I can't believe some people do this for fun,_ they thought to themself as they looked to the two, a hand on the door. "Are we good?"

The two nodded, and Ace opened up the door. The two came out onto a sort of balcony. Sadly, it was an indoor one. And then, finally, the three started walking. Junpei came to the railing and leaned over. Seven and Lotus were idling down there. Junpei waved and shouted a hello to the two before bolting past Ace to come down the stairs.

"Are the others not here yet?" he asked, coming to a stop by the two.

Lotus looked over from examining her nails. "If they're not with you, no."

"Oh, okay. How long have you two been here?"

"A few minutes." Her eyes moved to Ace and Clover as the two finally joined them.

Ace looked over to Seven, who was off to the side and had one hand on his forehead, gripping his hat. "Is he… all right?"

Lotus followed their eyes. "He'll be fine. He kept thinking about something, so I left him to it since he wasn't bothering me."

Light conversation continued for a few more minutes of not much in particular. The group decided not to share anything until the other three were back, as to avoid repeating stories. But everyone seemed all right, and they seemed satisfied with that.

And sure enough, a little bit later, the other three came up, all in one piece. They seemed a bit unsettled, but as everyone began to talk and share, it was quickly clear why. They'd been at some torture-esque place.

Next, the Door 1 group spoke, talking briefly about where they'd ended up before getting to what was the highlight of it all- The dead man found in the Captain's Quarters. No one could put together who it was, but they did at least all agree that it was unlikely that the man was truly Zero. That would be too obvious.

"We also found another Planet Key," Junpei said, pulling it from his pocket. "It's for Uranus, but it says Bottom Deck Library on it."

Santa peered over his shoulder to look at the card. "There wasn't a library where we were." He looked to Lotus and Seven. "How about you guys?"

"No, there wasn't a library." Lotus sounded almost uncharacteristically casual. "We ended up in a steam engine room and then a cargo room."

"Anything good pulled from it?"

"Not really. Well, we found Door 9, but that's about it."

And instantly, Lotus had the attention of everyone.

"... That's it?" Junpei echoed. "You found Door 9! We can escape now!"

There was an uneasy pause after Junpei's words. A single thought hung to everyone- Only up to 5 people could pass, and there was 8 of them there.

"Yeah, there were two Door 9s," she said, still seeming quite calm about it all. Everyone released a held breath.

"There were two?"

"Yes. There was one that was a set of large double doors, and one that was a smaller door to the side."

For the first time in a while, Seven spoke.

"We can show you where it is. There's a shortcut to get back."

Excitement passed through the group, and they began to head off toward the elevators that Lotus and Seven had come back from. But before they got far, June noticed something.

"Where's Clover?"

The group came to a stop and looked around. The pink girl was no where in sight in the main area.

Junpei came down from having jogged up the central staircase. "She was with us a minute ago… We'll have to go searching for her."

For once, there was little argument on that. Everyone quickly broke apart, heading off to search for the missing girl.


	5. END: Part 1

Clover read over the note in her hand over and over again, saying the words out loud.

"Truth had gone, truth had gone, and truth had gone. Ah, truth is now asleep in the darkness of the sinister hand."

It made absolutely zero sense every time. Truth had gone… meaning that the truth of something was no longer with them? But why repeat that 3 times, unless this was a poem? And then there was something about a sinister hand. A hand could mean anything. Left hands, for example, were seen as bad if they were your dominant one. But this clue could be something indicating to where Snake- No, Light was, so she had to figure it out.

Truth had gone… And left hands? Left hands…

"Left hands!" she suddenly exclaimed, getting up from where she'd sat down. She'd made her way back to the first-class cabin, wanting to be away from everyone before she pulled the note out. Junpei and Ace hadn't seemed to see it, but it had been sticking out of the captain's pocket. That captain was odd, anyways. She had a nagging feeling she knew him.

Anyways. Left hands. She looked to her left wrist, where the watch had been. Left hands must be referring to the bracelets, which meant they held some kind of a secret. The truth she was looking for was in the bracelets.

She examined the bracelet over. It didn't look like it was hiding something, outside of maybe the workings for the detonator. She tapped the button on the right side. Nothing. She tried the left, and then the right again, and then the left again, and then the right again. Still, nothing happened. She let out a sigh and sat back down. Just when she thought she'd had it…

She pressed the left button one last time. And then, suddenly, an array of numbers appeared. Clover stared at the watch in shock as it went back to reading a 3.

_Those numbers are what the watch is hiding. But what are these numbers for? What haven't we opened that needs to be?_

Another mystery, but it was soon solved as Clover looked up and her eyes locked onto something in a closet. A safe, in specific, something that no one in the group had been able to figure out how to open. She hopped off the bed and came over, crouching down to it. She went back to her bracelet and pressed in the combination again. Right, left, right, left, right, left. The numbers displayed again, reading out 1-4-3-8-3-4-2-1.

She could only recall about three at a time, but began to enter it. Turn to the right, and end on 1. Turn the left, end on 4. Turn to the right, end on 3, check the numbers. Turn to the left, end on 8. Turn to the right, end on 3, check the numbers. Turn to the left, end on 4. Turn to the right, end on 2. Turn to the left, end on 1.

The safe unlocked. Eagerly, Clover opened it up, and peered at whatever was inside. It was a piece of paper. She pulled it out, and read it over.

"Fact one… The Nonary Game was played nine years ago." Well, she already knew that. She'd been part of it. "Fact two… The person with the number 2 bracelet attended the game 9 years ago- Pisces?" She looked up and over to the door. Was… that how she recognised him? Had he been a player of it? She bit her lip. That didn't feel right. She kept reading. "Fact three… It was planned by the following four people: Cradle Pharmaceutical CEO Gentarou Hongou, Cradle Pharmaceutical Chief of Staff Nagisa Nijisaki-" Her thoughts cut off.

"Nijisaki."

She repeated the word.

"Nijisaki…"

Once more.

"Nijisaki."

It connected.

"That's who Pisces is!" She nearly dropped the note in her realisation. "That guy at the top of the building, with the fat guy!"

Her eyes went back down to the paper. It listed the two other people, Teruaki Kubota and Kagechika Musashidou, who were responsible for the Nonary Game. She had no idea who Hongou and Kubota might've been, but as she dug at her memories, she put together that man in the captain's quarters as Musashidou. It was the only thing that made sense.

Her eyes read the rest of the paper. Something about Zero wanting revenge and saving people… She didn't care. She shoved the paper in her pocket, steeled her resolve, and turned to leave the first class cabin.

* * *

><p>The elevator opened, and Ace stepped out of it. The hallway they'd come to would lead to Door 6, or if they'd taken the other, Door 9. Not very many feet away was a person, but not Clover. No, long, blue hair greeted him.<p>

"Lotus," they greeted.

She turned around. "Have you found Clover?"

"Not yet… I thought she might have headed to Door 9, but I seemed to have taken the wrong elevator." They let out a small laugh at their blunder.

She didn't laugh with. "I checked there already, and she wasn't there. I thought she might've done what you just did." Her hand came to her hip, and Ace could see the number 9 bracelet on it. Lotus and bracelet 9… That was all they needed, wasn't it?

Lotus cut off their thoughts.

"Well, anyways, she's not here, so I was going to head back up."

She began to walk away, moving past Ace. But she was stopped by a touch on her arm, and them saying, "Hold on a moment, Lotus."

She looked back. "Something wrong?"

"No, I just need something from you. Your bracelet."

There was hesitance followed by her raising an eyebrow. She then got an amused look in her eyes and a small smile. "I see. You want to escape through Door 9 while everyone is off searching for Clover. I didn't think you had something like that in you." The smile then went away as she got to business. "Well, had it been earlier, I might've taken that offer. But now that everyone has a way to escape, rather than just 3 to 5 people, I don't see why we should leave by ourselves anymore. Way to prove my thoughts on you wrong, though. And don't worry, I'll keep this between us."

She then turned away and started to leave, but Ace wasn't done.

"I'm sorry, but I don't seem to recall giving you an option."

She stopped in her tracks. "Excuse me…?"

Ace walked up behind her. "I mean that I am going to take your bracelet."

She spun around and grabbed her arm in defense. Her eyes had gotten wide. "What?!"

Before she could act again, Ace reached out and seized her. It wasn't very hard to get her to move. She wore those ridiculous heels and was lightweight. She was grabbed and knocked against the back wall. She landed with a grunt, and barely could recover before Ace moved out again. They pulled the knife from their coat, and slid it into her chest, sliding between ribs to shove the blade into her heart. It was then pulled back out, and she fell to the ground. Blood instantly began to pour out of it. The most she could do was put her hand to where the wound was and let death take her. When Ace reached down and picked up the number 9 bracelet from her side, she didn't try to keep it.

And that was how it stayed before her life bled away, and finally, her bracelet unsnapped and clattered onto the ground. Ace calmly reached down and picked it up, wiping the blood on it and the knife on her clothing before turning away. With that done, they needed to leave before anyone could come down and see this scene.

But of course, as soon as they thought that, the elevator suddenly began to move upwards. Ace frozen and looked back at it. There was nowhere to hide. What were they supposed to do?! They looked around, before taking the first option that came to their mind. Run to the side of the elevator. At the very least, they wouldn't be in immediate view of whoever came down. They could then sneak around and slip up the elevator. If the person stayed down, they'd be seen, but it would be too late. They would be homefree then.

The person who stepped out was Junpei. Ace kept themself pressed to the wall as the young man came out, and was immediately shocked by Lotus' body. He stood rigid, his breath caught in his throat. His legs trembled a bit. Ace couldn't hold back a feeling of mild disgust. How pitiful to be so rattled over a single corpse.

Soon, he moved forward, finally beginning to leave a gap where Ace could get out through the elevator. He bent down by the body and put a hand on her neck. She didn't respond, naturally. He then stepped back, looking at her again. Ace inched around the corner to the elevator doors, keeping a close eye on Junpei. They just had to open this damn elevator, and-

"Lotus' bracelet and the 9 bracelet are missing."

The words were a mere whisper. Ace had barely heard them, but their head snapped over to look at Junpei as soon as they realised it. They stayed still, hardly daring to breathe in case it alerted him to their presense. They watched and they listened. This was suddenly a very foul situation.

Junpei had stood there for several moments longer, frozen in time. Ace could only imagine what was running through his mind. Was he considering why they were missing?

They decided they couldn't risk that. Moving too fast to be noticed in time, Ace came up behind him and shoved the knife into his back. It slid in with ease, and let out a satisfying noise. But as soon as they did, it occurred to them that killing Junpei probably wasn't necessary. They could've just run, as loathsome as the activity was. Well, it was too late now. A low groan came out of Junpei, and he attempted to twist around, but only really moved the knife around.

It pulled Ace from their thoughts. They needed to release Junpei and get moving. They pulled the knife out and let him go, letting him fall down to the ground. Ace bent down and unceremoniously wiped the knife on Junpei's pants before putting it back in their coat pocket. They then reached a hand to Junpei's back pants pocket and pulled out the Uranus Keycard. They offered only a glance to Junpei's head, who stared emptily back. They then turned away and pressed the elevator button, going inside and lifting themself away.

* * *

><p>Pisces let out an irritated sigh as he went down a stairwell, ending up back by a hallway that led to the hospital rooms. He could see the pieces of paper from voting time still on the floor. He came over to them and looked down. There was about an hour and 45 minutes before time would be up, and the building would flood. He'd never understood why that was necessary… Just leave the building be. But no, Hongou just had to go to such ridiculous extremes.<p>

And now look where the two were. Forced to play their own damn game. It was annoying. It was beyond ridiculous. And primarily, it was awful. Nijisaki crouched down by the papers, and picked up the one he'd written "2" on.

They hated that number. Two. Second. Next. Lower. Inferior. But that number haunted him his entire life. Hell, it was the first syllable in their name! It had almost been a relief when Hongou started obsessing over having the number 9 be a central theme.

His eyes moved to their bracelet, and his thoughts began to drift some. Specifically, he recalled a short conversation he'd had with Hongou. It was of nothing in particular. It was small talk and mild banter, a norm for the two, over working on some of the plans for the puzzles the Nonary Game would have. Nijisaki had asked them how they even came up with some of these ideas. Most had been discussed and modified from the original proposal, but Hongou had been responsible for the bulk of the initial ideas. And he hadn't really gotten a response to his question. Hongou had looked up and let out a small laugh. It'd been an unsettling laugh. Misplaced. And they dismissed the question by saying they had some references. Nijisaki had asked what, but his question was cut off by Hongou pointing out an error in his work.

He hadn't asked since then. It never seemed like a good time, and he'd soon forgotten about the whole thing. Looking back now, he felt a bit unnerved. Had Hongou just looked up a bunch of things related to nine? That didn't feel right. It seemed more like they had precedent.

Maybe he ought to ask when they got out. But then again, any question that seemed to ask more of Hongou's personal connection or inspiration for the Nonary Game had been ignored. It was never directly answered, or it had been changed into something else.

He set the paper down. What was up with that, anyways?

Any more speculation was cut off by the sound of footprints. Nijisaki looked up. From not far away, he could see Clover walking toward him. He set the paper down and stood up.

"Clover!" His voice didn't do much to hide his shock. "There you are. Everyone's been looking for you. Where did you run off to?"

"I needed to check something." Her voice was fairly flat, yet she looked fairly content. It wasn't natural. It made Pisces wary.

"Oh? What's that?"

"Who you are."

He felt himself go rigid. "I thought we took nicknames for a reason."

"Shut up!" Her tone grew harsh, and she glared. "I know you know who I am by now, and now I remembered who you are. You're Nijisaki!"

He drew back, his eyes going wide and his upper lip raising some. "You brat!" he hissed.

"So you do know who I am!"

He rolled his eyes. "Of course I know. You didn't even attempt a nickname."

Her hands went on her hips. "It was enough nickname for everyone else. But that's not the point here."

"Then what is?"

"You aren't going to leave this ship." She took the note from her pocket and shoved it into his hands. "You're here, and Musashidou was found dead in the captain's quarters. I'm betting the other two are somewhere around. Zero wants revenge, but I'm getting some of my own first." She reached behind her, and pulled out an axe from who even knew where. Blood was on its handle. "If you hadn't made this thing in the first place, we wouldn't be here. This wouldn't exist. And my brother wouldn't be missing- He's probably dead!" Her voice was cold and not changing much pitch, but it shook with emotion.

Nijisaki took another step back. "Be… Be rational here, Clover. I'm not involved in your brother's disappearance. I was set up to replace him, but I wasn't the one who-"

"I don't care." She moved toward him. "I told you. If you hadn't even made your game or whatever, we wouldn't be here. My brother and I would be fine, and at home. But now we're tied up in some revenge plot, and he's gone."

"Shouldn't you be looking for Zero then?" The desperation in his voice made him internally cringe, but now was no time for that.

"I will. After you three."

And with that, Clover lunged forward. A hideous scream came out of Nijisaki, and he bolted to the side, coming up to a wall. He was wildly terrified now, and Clover's faced had grown empty and cold. She began to walk toward him.

A moment later, and she was knocked down. Seven had bolted in and done the first thing that came to his mind- Shove Clover over. Nijisaki didn't even think about staying there, and took off bolting down the hallway with all the single hospital rooms.

He didn't stop running, either, even when his feet made him stumble, when he struggled for air, when he damn-near smacked right into the door leading back to the central staircase, when he passed Santa and June, and nearly almost when he reached the elevator that lead to Door 9. The chapel-like area was where everyone had agreed to meet when they were done with their search, and it was the only place his mind was telling him to go. Closer to the safety. Closer to getting the hell away from Clover.

His hand slammed on the button and he went inside, only to break out into a second run when it opened. His eyes fixated on a distance spot- A door, to be exact, coloured brown in contrast to the surrounding grey. He almost fell to the ground as he came to a stop in front of it, but caught himself on the doorframe and looked inside. There was only one person inside.

"Hongou." The word came out weak and airy. He forced himself into the chapel, where Hongou met and half-caught him from collapsing.

"A little eager to get here?" They nudged Nijisaki to one of the rows of seats. "Sit down for a minute. I don't think you can even continue to stand."

Nijisaki let himself get herded. Frankly, he welcomed the opportunity to sit, but there were slightly more important matters. He looked up at Hongou, and said between laboured breathing, "Hongou, we need to get out of here. Now."

"I understand we've less time than more, but there's still a good hour left-"

"No, that's not why." He leaned on the bench some. "We're- ... Clover."

Hongou raised an eyebrow. "Was she found?"

Nijisaki nodded. "Yeah, she was found, but she… I met Clover by the big hospital room, the hallway by the stairs. She recognises me. She found this note, and…" He went into his pockets and pulled out the paper Clover had handed him, passing it to Hongou. "She's trying to kill me. She wants you dead, but she doesn't know it's you, and she said the body found in the captain's quarters was Musashidou, and- She's blaming us for this all. She doesn't think we're involved with Snake's disappearance, but she's trying to get some kind of scapegoat or revenge or whatever, and… And we need to find June and get out of here."

When he finished, Hongou gave a slow nod, saying, "All right. Try to calm down first."

"You want me to calm down?" He looked offended. "She came at me with an axe!"

"Yes, I want you to calm down. You're right in saying we need to leave if this is the case, but you're still exhausted, and panicking isn't going to get us anywhere."

Nijisaki shook his head and started to stand up, saying, "No, we need to get out of here now. Seven managed to stop her, but that doesn't mean she's not going to tell him what's going on, or that she couldn't get away. And I don't know about you, but I don't want to deal with Seven and Clover with an axe. We have to find June. I don't even care if she refuses. I'll drag her myself if I have to. I'm not staying in this ship or building or whatever it is."

There were several seconds where the two had a stand off, with Hongou blocking the path to leaving the benches and Nijisaki trying to. They were silent. Nijisaki was glaring, but Hongou just remained a level look. It was a bit infuriating to Nijsaki.

"I thought you of all people would understand that we need to get out of here," Nijisaki said, finally breaking away. "Are you trying to die now?"

"No, and that's part of why I'm not letting you leave." They remained poised. "Consider our situation for a minute, Nijisaki. Neither of us have any sort of protection against Clover, and Seven if we assume he's turned against us. We have no weapon to come back with if we're attacked. I certainly am no runner, and you're still winded, so that isn't an option, and we still need to sort out how we're going to get June here. Sitting here is dangerous, yes, but we're also asking for trouble by leaving."

Nijisaki went into his pocket, and pulled out the screwdriver. "I still have this."

"Please, now's no time for screwing around."

"Fair enou-" Nijisaki stopped and looked over to Hongou with a glare. He was answered an amused smile. He put the screwdriver back in his pocket. "Now's no time for your "jokes"."

"No, but my point stands." Their smile went away. "A screwdriver isn't very deadly."

"Well, it's better than nothing," he pointed out.

They looked unimpressed. "You said you were going up against an axe."

He looked to the side. "Right. I suppose a screwdriver would be useless. What are we supposed to do then? There isn't anything in this room we can really use."

"We'll have to find a way to be stealthy about it."

To Hongou, the answer seemed obvious. Nijisaki didn't respond as well.

"Be stealthy? How do you suppose that?" His arms folded. "We have a hallway and an elevator to get through. Who says they aren't there?"

"Nothing, but it's that or remain here. Which I believe you're strongly opposed to…?" Their head tilted to the side a bit.

"Good point." Nijisaki let his arms drop. He then turned away, walking a few paces. "God, Hongou, I don't know how you manage to remain so calm." His voice held a faint, dead laugh.

"Responding to an emergency is only going to hurt us more," they answered simply. "Shall we be off, then?"

"No."

"Why not?"

Nijisaki looked over. "I didn't say that."

The two turned around, facing the source of the voice. The doorway. Clover. She stood there, a golden gun in her hands. She had it raised up towards the two with a finger on the trigger. Her hands were shaking, and tears were threatening to break through a glare, but she remained standing there.

"No, it was me," she answered. Her voice struggled to remain level. "Because I mean it. You aren't going anywhere. I heard what you called Ace, too." Her hands tightened their grip, but she didn't fire yet. She just focused on trying to steady herself. "I'm not letting you two get away!"

Hongou took a small step forward, saying, "Clover, please calm down," but was cut short by her shouting at them.

"Stay away from me!"

They stepped back, putting their hands up.

"I don't care about what you have to say. You're one of the people who were behind the Nonary Game 9 years ago." Her voice was quickly falling from whatever had been previously holding it together. Tears were starting to break from her eyes. "I'll tell you what I told Nijisaki. If it hadn't been for that game, none of this would've happened. Zero would have nothing to get revenge for, and my brother might be okay. But look where we are instead! I'm not… I'm not letting you get away with everything you've caused!"

Hongou attempted to reason with her regardless of her warnings. "How Zero reacted to the Nonary Project is out of our control. You can't blame us for this. You're acting irrational."

"I don't care. Like Zero said on that note I found, for the people you've hurt, you're going to pay for it!" She reaffirmed her stance, and aimed the gun at the two.

And then, a noise startled all three of them. It was a set of rapid knockings, as though someone was frantically trying to get inside a building. They all froze. The knockings paused, and started up again. The sound of something harsh being hit was heard as well, like the door the person was knocking on had been kicked. A voice followed, muffled, but nearby.

"Hello?"

Clover's eyes went wide, and her grip slackened some. She looked around quickly. "Light?!" She looked to the two standing in the middle of the chapel and pointed her gun again. "Where's that noise coming from? Where's my brother?!"

The knocking continued. The three looked around the room, eyeing the several wooden benches and even the doors. No one could put together what it was, or at least until Nijisaki pointed to something at the other end of the room.

"Is that a… coffin?"

Their eyes followed. At the end of the room, on a raised platform, was a wooden coffin. On the side was a keypad. As the group listened, they quickly came to realise that it was, in fact, the source of the knocking. Without a second thought, Clover dropped the gun and darted over. She crouched down by the coffin's keypad, and began to sort out what the combination might be.

Hongou took the chance. They leaned to Nijisaki, and said to him in a low voice, "Get out of here while you can. Gather what you require, and come back."

"But… what do we do about the fact that Clover knows who we are?" He glanced to the girl, who was doing something with her bracelet and putting in numbers.

The two watched for a minute. After a couple more times of looking at her bracelet and putting in numbers, she pressed a button on the lock. A click was heard. Clover wasted no time and tossed open the lid.

"Light!"

Hongou looked back to Nijisaki. "I'll take care of it. Hurry, now!"

Nijisaki nodded and quietly creeped through the chapel, making way to the door. Clover didn't even notice. She'd thrown herself around her brother, arms holding him tight while she broke down sobbing. Nijisaki lingered by the door for a moment. Light was comforting her, but his confusion was unmistakable. It might've been cute under other circumstances. For now, Nijisaki had a mission. He turned away and began to jog, but ended up just walking quickly. His legs weren't quite ready to run again.

He was about to the elevator when two gunshots echoed down from the room. His steps stopped. He turned around and looked back wildly, eyeing where he'd been for anything that might emerge. Nothing did. He began to walk back, taking care that his footsteps made no noise as if that might alert whatever was the source of that.

It was slow, but he made his way back to the door. He came up to the side of it and peered in. At the very least, Hongou's corpse wasn't lying on the floor. The gun was gone, however. Nijisaki took a few steps in, continuing to look around.

And that was when he noticed Clover and Light. They were by the coffin, collapsed in on one another. They didn't move. He could see Clover's bracelet collapsed onto the ground. Blood came from both of their heads.

They had been killed, and Hongou and the gun were no where in sight. Nijisaki looked to the right of the coffin, where the smaller of the two number 9 doors were. The RED showed that it had been activated. Engaged, the specific word was.

Legs tired or not, Nijisaki ran out of the room and back down the hall. As he did, the official realisation came to him. Hongou had killed the two and ditched him. He wasn't sure how to react. He just felt strangely numb. He accepted it, and yet denied it all together.

He stopped by the elevator, pausing to catch his breath. He looked to his left. There was the gate, the other elevator, and two bodies. He pulled away from the elevator and came to the fence, looking through. The people were Junpei and Lotus. Junpei looked like he'd been stabbed trying to get back to the elevator, while Lotus was shoved up on the wall. Junpei's bracelet had collapsed to the side. Lotus' was missing altogether. Nijisaki looked to her side, where he'd seen her put the 9th bracelet before everyone had broken apart. It was gone as well.

So Hongou was probably responsible for this as well. Nijisaki tore from the gate and went inside the elevator. Hongou could be cunning and cold if they wanted, but this was a new extreme. He'd wondered it before, but another sharp realisation had come to Nijisaki. When he'd encountered Hongou in the large hospital room, he was going to be killed. If Clover hadn't walked in, he'd probably be lying in his own blood on the floor.

The elevator opened. He stepped out. He needed to find Seven, June, and Santa. Together, the four could leave through the large Door 9. He wasn't going to be left behind. He quickly decided that.

But as he walked through the ship, calling out names, he got no response. He saw no sign of life. It was as though everyone had left, and he was just forgotten. He was a second thought, something that came back when it was too late. Always with the twos.

He made his way through the Jupiter door, and went down the hall with all the hospital rooms. It was the only place he really had left to go. He came out into the wide hall before the big hospital room, and stared blankly at the floor. Seven was there with an axe driven through him. His bracelet was gone. Nijisaki wondered if Clover had taken it, intending to get his and Junpei's and leave. It'd certainly be one way to get out, at least.

He moved past, and entered the large hospital room. It was empty. June and Santa were nowhere to be found. That left him with a situation. He vowed to not stay there, but he still also had to find a way to get out through the other Door 9. The bracelets he knew available were 5, 4, another 2, and possible 7. Of those, he could assure that 2 and 5 were there and could get him through the door.

So he turned away and headed back to the central staircase. He came to the Saturn elevators once more, but now took the one with a card reader. Two bodies that hadn't moved greeted him. He could offer no reaction, and just collected Junpei's bracelet before turning and going back up. He then moved to the other elevator and went back down. His feet carried him to the chapel again. Not much had really changed, and the other Door 9 showed no signs of use. He came to the coffin, and stopped.

It finally sunk in. All these people were dead, and do to Hongou. A feeling of revulsion came over him. He knew Hongou more than anyone in here, and yet even he'd been left behind. He stared at Clover and Light, frozen in their moment. His chest felt tight, and it was a bit hard to breathe. His formerly restoring legs now gave way, and he sunk to his knees, his hands collapsing on his legs. He couldn't say he had any particular attachment to any of the people who'd died, but their deaths still seemed to hit him like a brick to the face.

And, somewhere in the back of his mind, he wondered about Musashidou and Kubota. Had Hongou been responsible for that as well? They'd certainly gone through Door 1, and if they were ready to kill him, they were probably ready to kill the other two. Kubota had died right at the start of the game. It felt unsettling to know that.

He felt hands slip through his hair and grip it. He heard a scream. It took him a while before he realised that all was his own doing.

Nijisaki wasn't sure how long he sat there. He eventually recovered and stood back up. He felt empty. Null, really. Emotions tried and faded away. He decided that his mind must've shut them off for his own protection. He reached into the coffin and pulled out the second number 2 bracelet. Or the first, really. He was the second number two.

Something else of interest caught his eye. It was a glowing LED in Clover's pocket- A bracelet marked with "0". He pulled it out and examined it. He had no idea where it came from, but something seemed odd about it. He turned away and came to the available Door 9. He waved the 2 and 5 bracelet in front of the RED, put his own hand on it, and then brought the number 0 bracelet to it. He pulled the lever. He was given an error.

How strange. He had no idea of what it could be instead, though. He could test a few numbers. He swapped a couple combinations of the numbers he had with the 0 bracelet. All turned up nothing. That meant it definitely wasn't 9, 5, or 2. He turned around and picked up the number 4 bracelet as well. It was run with some combinations. The bracelet also didn't equal 7, 1 or 3. That meant it was either 4, 6, or 8. He had no way to test those, though. No digital root he had available required those numbers. He went back to Clover to return the 0 bracelet and the 4 bracelet, when he noticed one thing he hadn't before. It was what his suspicion had called for- Clover had taken Seven's bracelet. He picked it up.

That meant he could test a little bit more. He set down the number 4 bracelet and prepared 5 and 7. They were waved in front of the RED. The number 0 bracelet was registered, and the lever was pulled. To his surprise, the door opened.

So the 0 was actually a 6? Was it trying to tell him something? 6 was June's number. Was the bracelet saying that June was Zero?

Maybe. Maybe not. He tossed the 7 and newly found 6 bracelet aside. June didn't really seem like she would be. But as he opened up the large Door 9, he reminded himself that he just dealt with a few heel-face turns already.


	6. END: Part 2

The doors slammed shut behind him, but Nijisaki remained steady. Not even the hollow beeping of the bracelets seemed to rattle him like it did before. The DEAD was close by. The two bracelets were waved in front of it, and his own hand pressed on the scanner. The lever was pulled. The skulls on the bracelets faded away and the room went silent. Nijisaki turned away and looked down the hall. It was long, and each step he took when he began walking echoed throughout it. He had only the incinerator left to get past, and he could leave.

He wondered if Hongou had gotten to there yet. There was no doubt that they knew the puzzle solutions still, and they'd been about for a while. Would that lock him out? In that case, he'd need to activate the sudoku puzzle to allow the door to let him cross again. Was that even really possible? The doors automatically closed if time was up, or they could be manually closed. But there wasn't anyone there to close it, so he'd just have to activate the incinerator and puzzle, and just solve it before time was up.

Could he really solve it in time? He's have 18 minutes at maximum. Even if he couldn't remember the solution, he'd have plenty of time to get it done. It was moderately easy last he knew, and he could sometimes clear sudoku puzzles like that in 4 minutes flat.

He was satisfied in that aspect, but other thoughts came to him. Namely, that there was someone who could close it- Santa and June. The two had vanished. They weren't even killed. They simply disappeared from existence on the ship. Either they'd played a runaway game with him or they'd left through some means. But if June was Zero like the bracelets implied, those means weren't hard to consider. They likely had the keys to everything. There were secret routes not available to players, but anyone with the keys for them could easily get through the ship. Or building, he supposed. The Gigantic was no more.

If June was Zero, and Santa had vanished with her, that probably meant that Santa was connected to June somehow. Perhaps her helper, or a second person under the name of Zero. It did make him wonder who would they were, in that case. They had connections to the Nonary Project of nine years prior. That was unarguably true. Maybe they were a pair of siblings who'd been part of it?

June didn't seem that recognisable, so Nijisaki thought to Santa. He had some more distinctive qualities. That pun of a nickname revealed that he knew Japanese, so he probably hadn't been one of the white kids. He also had distinctive white hair.

A kid with white hair… Nijisaki thought to the 18 kids who'd been part of it. He went over all of them who he could remember, be it looks, names, or otherwise. Santa definitely wouldn't have been one of the kids in Building Q. None matched his looks. So he continued to think as he walked down the hall, trying to remember the children in the Gigantic.

It felt weird to call the ship the Gigantic. That was its technical name and what Hongou referred to it, but that was unofficial in relation to the Nonary Project. There, it had been called Ship 9 to pair with Building Q, and Ship 9 was the name he best knew it as.

Anyways. What were the children on it? He could remember a few. Light, for example, had been on it. There was an overweight child with the smallest eyebrows one could imagine, a child with one of the worst hairstyles he'd ever seen, and… and yes, there had been a white-haired boy. His name was Aoi Kurashiki. There'd been some trouble with him and his sister. They were a pair, and his sister was meant to go to Building Q, but she ended up on the ship. Nijisaki rolled over that thought for a minute. Her name had been Akane. She had brown hair. She had been about 12 years old. She'd also been the kid who Hongou...

If his guess was correct, then Santa's name was Aoi, and June's name was Akane. It certainly set up a situation where they'd want revenge. But spite still seemed sort of weak to do all of this. There had to be something more to it. He went into his pocket and pulled out Zero's note. It said revenge was one motive, but it also gave the cryptic message of something else.

_That innocent souls might be saved, I now state the truth._

The truth probably meant the reveal of who was behind the Nonary Project, but what innocent souls was Zero referring to? What good came out of Clover finding that out? Zero had proven that they- or rather, she, was more than capable of predicting what would happen. The only conclusion he could come to was that Zero had predicted that something else would happen. Maybe that so much death wouldn't have come.

But that didn't seem right. If Zero hadn't wanted anyone to die, she just didn't need to host the game at all. She wouldn't get revenge, but at the very least, that message couldn't tie to a motive for hosting the game.

_Assuming I even interpreted it correctly._ Nijisaki read the note again. _But what else could innocent souls be? Herself? Did her anticipations suggest that she might not live if Clover hadn't realised who we are?_

Well, that was countered due to the fact that it says souls over soul. So then did it include her brother?

No, no, he was supposed to be thinking of why the game would even be hosted. Again, if she didn't want to risk damage of anyone in the game, then she wouldn't have run it. There was someone who had to be saved in this game, or saved because of this game. Or multiple people, whatever. His mind thought to Hongou. The names of the dead echoed in his head.

_Was the point of this to stop Hongou from doing something? … Have they been planning something I'm not aware of? Or does Zero- Akane? June? Whatever. Does she know they're going to do something? She's acted like she knows what's going to happen, so what even says she's restricted just to this game?_

_But also… why? Why can she predict this?_

_Akane Kurashiki was the child who… that was returned to the incinerator. She's reappeared as Zero, and wants revenge for all that happened and wants to save someone. She's an Esper who was described as having a strong ability._

_What's the limit of the fields, anyways? Space is unimportant, but what about the content of those messages? Or the time in which it's sent and received? Could Zero really be that powerful of an Esper as to pass through time?_

The whole thing was too confusing. Whatever it was, Zero certainly knew a lot more on the fields than he did. The fields were never that interesting to him anyways. It was all Hongou who was so obsessed with them. He found them interesting, sure, but that didn't mean he was invested in them. He was satisfied with things that made sense.

Either way, he'd come to the end of the hall. He stopped, looking down the staircase that led to the incinerator. He stiffened at his memories of it. It always had made him feel uncomfortably small. Taking in a breath of preparation for whatever might be down there, he walked down the staircase and came down into another hallway. At the end of it was a single, grey door. He came to the door, put his hand on the handle, and stopped.

Anxiety abruptly paralysed him. He knew what was beyond there. It was the incinerator. It burned things if you turned it on. Was Hongou there? Had they passed through? If they were there, would they attack him? Would they really be able to make it out?

His hand released the door. He realised he was shaking. At least, he was sure he was, but his vision was unfocused and he suddenly felt horrible dizzy, so he wasn't sure. He felt the need to run, or to move, or to just get away. His hands fidgeted with each other, his clothes, and his hair in no particular manner. They needed something to grasp and play with. He backed away from the door and leaned on a wall. He breathed through his mouth, but each one shivered and was harder than the last. He looked around for anyone or anything in the hall.

He couldn't do this. He couldn't go to the incinerator. If Hongou was there, he was going to be shot or stabbed. If Hongou wasn't, he was going to burn. Stay here meant drowning. It was a trap. He was going to die. There was no escape. There was no relief. He was doomed to nothing more than death. He should've died back in the hospital room.

His thoughts stopped everything besides saying that he was going to die. His hands began to claw at his clothes. An overwhelming urge to either scream, cry, or both took over him. He eventually turned away from the door, forcing himself to walk back down the hall to the stairs. He returned to the door, and leaned against the wall again. He remained there and focused on trying to calm down. He stayed there for a time he wasn't quite sure of. And when he finally collected himself, he forced himself through that door, and finally to the incinerator.

What greeted him was a giant metal door, black compared to its silver surroundings. The wall around it curved some, and he knew there was a door out of his sight. There were a few things on the wall in the wide room, such as cabinets, windows, and an eventual control panel. Above the door was a sign, saying, "CAUTION" on one line and the one below it saying "INCINERATOR". To the side of the door was a lever for opening the door.

He came up to the window on the door and crouched, looking inside. Nothing was there. The light wasn't on, no one was inside, and the final Door 9 was there. He moved away and came to the lever. He put his hand on it, and after steeling his courage and will, he pulled it down. The door, sure enough, slid open, welcoming Nijisaki inside with a hungry emptiness to where it had been. He came to the now open space and looked inside again. Nothing had changed.

Slowly, he came in, walking like he expected the floor to shatter. When it seemed all right, he began to move through, approaching the number 9 door. He looked to the RED. It hadn't been activated. Some part of him wondered what had delayed Hongou, and the other didn't care. That part made him reach for the bracelets with him and put them to the door one by one. He could still escape. He could still make it out alive.

Manifesting all his hope and desperation into it, Nijisaki yanked down the RED's lever.

"ERROR," the RED answered.

He stared at it, stunned. He scanned again and pulled. Another error. He tried again, and a fourth time, and still got no result.

It was a trap, he realised. The door's number wasn't a 9. He looked to it, and looked back to the open doors. He ran out of the incinerator as fast as his legs would take him, and nearly fell onto the floor as he came out. He spun around and looked around the room. No one was there about to activate the incinerator.

That didn't mean it was empty. No, a few meters away was Hongou. Nijisaki froze at the sight of the other person. He knew they'd eventually show up, but right now of all times? A thousand words came up in his head to say, but when Hongou spoke, none would come out.

"Are you all right? You look quite startled."

Nijisaki forced a nod. He tried for something to say, but none decided they wanted to be spoken. His mind told him to run, that Hongou was armed and would probably kill him, but he didn't move. For some reason or another, his legs didn't carry him anywhere.

Maybe it was because of the doubt coming in his mind. A single thought of, _Are they really going to kill me?_ and for some reason, that felt reassuring. As if that made sense.

It did to him the more he thought on it. There were so many times Hongou had the chance; there was so much death that occurred, and yet, here he was. He had a bit of a shaking hand out, and he heard himself say, "Are we going to leave?" He was alive, and moving. Hongou hadn't pulled anything out, but instead had taken his hand.

_They killed Snake and Clover,_ his mind pointed out._ They didn't have to kill them. Just talk to them, and get Clover to calm down, and…_

_But that was Light, right? Her brother? So did she say something to Light about us? Was she going to make sure we couldn't leave after all?_

He knew nothing on what happened and why, but when he tried to say something about it, he couldn't. What came out in replacement was, "We need to find out how to open the door. It wouldn't open to the digital root of 9."

"That would explain why you ran out of there," they said as they began to walk toward the incinerator. Nijisaki didn't move, though. His grip on Hongou's hand tightened and he stared at where they had been.

Hongou turned around slightly. "Something the matter?"

He remained standing there in silence for a bit before he pulled his hand away and finally faced Hongou. "Why did you…" another pause, "leave me behind?"

Their expression was near unreadable for much else beside calmness. "Because I wouldn't have been able to go with all of you."

2 + 7 + 3 + 6 = 18, and 1 + 8 = 9.

"We could have talked it over as a group," he argued. "You could have told me, or…" His voice died out.

"You're right."

Somehow, Nijisaki didn't feel very assured.

"I should have at least told you. I apologise for that."

There was another awkward silence. As they had been doing for a while, words hovered on the edge of Nijisaki's tongue, but he couldn't find the strength within him to say them. He was terrified of the answer, he decided, and that was why he couldn't. He pushed that question away, and said another in replacement.

"Did you kill them?"

"Who?"

"... Everyone."

The word hung in the air while Hongou raised an eyebrow. "No."

"Why are the bracelets Lotus had missing? Why was Junpei's left there- What _happened?_" With some words finally being said, he couldn't be stopped. "Why did you kill Clover and Snake? Where have Santa and June gone? Why couldn't we just find Clover and leave?"

Hongou didn't respond immediately, and Nijisaki took a step back. His head shook a bit and he couldn't maintain a steady gaze. His eyes were distrusting and afraid.

A long breath went through Hongou, and they put their hands in their coat pockets. They then finally began to explain.

"Everyone split up to search for Clover. I met Lotus in the hallway to Door 6, where she handed me the number 9 bracelet and asked me to leave through a door with her. But Junpei had come down from the elevator and seen this, and must have believe I'd say yes to that. He attacked Lotus with a knife from who knows where… The kitchen, maybe. I believed that I'd follow, so I tried to restrain him, and, well… you see how it ended up."

That made sense, Nijisaki told himself over and over. Maybe it was out of a desire for it to be true. He just needed a little more from them, and then he could be satisfied.

"But then.. why were the bracelets gone?"

"I suppose you could say I panicked." That was a little hard to picture, but Nijisaki let them continue. "I hadn't… meant to kill him. I was trying to disarm him and it went wrong. I felt a need to get away, but by the time I reached the chapel, I'd gathered my bearings and decided against it. You came in shortly after."

Nijisaki took a minute to process this. So it'd been an accident in self-defense. He didn't really know Junpei and Lotus, so maybe it was possible that the scene had occurred. He still felt uneasy, but couldn't find it within him to try and disprove what he said.

So he moved to the next issue. "And Clover and Snake? Why them?"

Their answer was short and simple. "Because Clover noticed you were missing and told Snake who we are. She was going to attack me and chase after you."

"You didn't even try to talk to them?"

"She attacked you with an axe and threatened both of us with a gun," they pointed out. "She was still agitated. I didn't want to risk our lives, so I had to."

There was a silence that followed before Nijisaki let out an empty laugh. He held his arms and took a couple steps away. "What the hell, Hongou?"

"I only-"

"That's not what I mean." Nijisaki shook his head and let out a sigh.

"Then what do you mean?"

"I don't even know…" He looked back to the incinerator and held out his arms. "This?" They dropped to his sides. "This game? Everything that's happened? What are we going to do, leave and go back to normal?" He looked back over. "Is that even possible?"

"If you want it to be, then it can happen."

"I doubt that somehow." But he stopped. He stopped trying to understand, and he stopped trying to learn. He walked past Hongou, saying, "Let's just sort out what's wrong with the door and get out of here."

"What's wrong with the door…?" they repeated, following.

"I said it doesn't take the digital root of 9." He came up to the door and scanned the three bracelets with him, and pulled the lever. He was given an error. He turned around. "See what I mean? Zero set up a trap."

Hongou thought it over, looking at the 9 on the door. They then came up to the RED and inserted the number 8 bracelet and their own. They turned to Nijisaki. "Scan the three you have."

Nijisaki did as he was asked, and the lever was pulled. The door stayed shut.

"Hm… I had wondered if it needed 5 numbers, but apparently not." Hongou stepped away and looked up at it again. "I don't think there's much to be seen here. For now, we should leave this be and step out." They then turned away and began to walk back.

Nijisaki followed, but asked, "Why's that?"

They looked back, almost amused. "You said June and Santa were missing. That means they aren't dead, but they've gone somewhere on the ship. I have some reasons to why that is," they looked forward again, "and frankly, I'd rather not be caught in here without knowing how to open the door."

"Fair enough," he answered, and came to a stop as they exited. "What do you suppose is the number it takes?"

"Who says it takes one?" they countered. "I was thinking of investigating the control panel for anything. A switch or a button maybe. Zero could've set up a puzzle in here."

Nijisaki watched as they went to the panel, and decided to check some cabinets himself. As he did, he asked, "What makes you think that?"

"The fact that it won't register 9." They opened up the panel. "Maybe it takes a different number, or maybe it needs to have something activated. But the door hasn't been opened yet, so for it to not accept 9 certainly means we need to find something out." They put a hand on their chin as they looked at the various switches, levers, and buttons before them. They'd learned what each meant, but now needed to sort out what Zero manipulated and changed. "Maybe there's a clue somewhere…"

"Do you think something might've been in the rooms we went to?"

Hongou looked over. "I can't say we found anything too unusual outside of the dead man and the number 0 bracelet."

"Neither did I. And there was nothing in the chapel?"

"If there is, I don't know it." They left the panel and began to look around the room. "Was it an obvious clue, though? Or was it more subtle?" They thought back to the rooms they'd explored. Something that might hint toward what was wrong with the door… There wasn't much out of place. Or was the bracelet the clue? Was that needed for the door to open? It was certainly possible, but it seemed unlikely. Why would Zero set something up like that?

Then suddenly, Nijisaki shouted out, "E equals 14!"

Hongou looked over from one of the doors to the incinerator. "I thought it was E equals mc squared."

"No, no, not that." He looked excited. "I mean E is 14. Hexadecimal, Hongou. The confinement rooms deal with hexadecimals. Are we sure that door is actually a 9?"

"I… suppose not. What exactly are you driving at?"

"I mean that I don't think that's even a 9." Nijisaki went back to the door and looked inside the door. "What else could a 9 be?"

Hongou came over next to him. "9 in hexadecimal is just 9."

"Building Q and Ship 9, Hongou. That's not a 9. It's a Q. It's a lowercase Q."

There was a pause, and it registered with Hongou. Their eyes widened some and they blinked in surprise. "I… suppose that could be possible. So if it's a Q, what do you suppose that means? It could be 17, Q's placement in the alphabet."

"I was thinking it meant 26. That's what Q is in hexadecimal." Nijisaki went to his pockets. "Do we even have the right numbers to test those? We have… Well, 9, 5, 2, and 1 could make 17, right?" He pulled out the number 5 bracelet. "We could try that."

Hongou nodded and made way to the door, retrieving the number 9 bracelet. They put it to the scanner before placing their hand on it. Nijisaki then scanned his own and number 5. The lever was pulled. Another error came up.

Hongou put the bracelet back. "Our next number to try would be 26, then."

"Yes, but we don't have any numbers that would work. I already rendered them in my head." The comment was said with a touch of pride. Nijisaki had always been some kind of a math whiz. Hongou found the subject easy through school, but Nijisaki was especially talented. He'd only really been surpassed by Kubota.

"What do we need to get through?"

"Well, working with what we have and the 5 number limit… 1, 2, 8, and 9 would only need 6 to get through."

Hongou raised an eyebrow at him. "And you realise that June is missing, yes?"

"I know, but we can go back and get the other 6 bracelet," he pointed out.

"The… other one?"

Nijisaki paused, and then said, "Oh. The number 0 bracelet Clover had- I tested what it was, and it paired with 5 and 7 to open the door. Its real value is 6. There's a lot we can interpret based on that, but now really isn't the time. We need to go back and get it. 1, 2, and 6 can pass through the number 9 door, after all." He began to walk out of the incinerator. "Let's go. There's an elevator that goes to the hospital room."

"Nijisaki…"

He stopped and looked back. "What?"

Hongou opened their mouth to say something, but shut it and shook their head. "Never mind. We don't have time to spare." They walked past Nijisaki and began to head toward the elevator. "Quickly now!"

Nijisaki followed. The two went back down the hall, and came upon the elevator. The button on it was pressed. It whirred to life and lowered, opening up to allow the two in. They went in, and Nijisaki pressed the button to head up with a bit too much eagerness. They went upward and came out. Rows upon rows of beds greeted them.

They didn't waste time. They headed out the door and into the hall. Nijisaki made an effort not to look at Seven, but Hongou couldn't help a look. An axe was shoved in his chest, but judging by the blood around him, it wasn't the only hit he'd taken. Perhaps to the back, or he'd been struck there twice. Whatever it was, they didn't have enough time to look. They were headed down the hall with all the hospital rooms and quickly coming up to the Jupiter door. It had long been opened. The two moved past it and came to the Saturn elevators. Like before, they went in and left when it opened again. And also like before, Nijisaki looked away from the dead bodies to the right, as though he didn't want to think they existed.

It mattered not to Hongou. The two came back to the chapel. The door had been closed. Nijisaki tossed it open and the two went inside.

They both looked to the coffin. It had been shut, be it done by person or automatically. Nijisaki's shoulders relaxed at that sight. Hongou felt relatively indifferent, and asked, "What did you do with the number 0- Ah... the number 6 bracelet?"

Nijisaki made his way to some benches by the larger number 9 door. He picked the bracelet off the ground and held it up before coming to the RED. The bracelet was waved before his own hand was put on it. Hongou came up beside him and scanned their own bracelet.

Nijisaki looked at them. "I'm going to pull it, all right?"

When they nodded, he did. The doors that made up the larger number 9 opened up and the two came in. The DEAD was soon found and the bracelets were deactivated.

"6 is 0…" Hongou thought aloud as the two began to head down the hall. "I'm aware June and Santa are likely alive, so what do you suppose that would mean?"

Nijisaki considered that for a moment, and answered, "What's on the tin is my guess. June is Zero."

"Well, yes. What do you think Santa's relation is, then? Her assistant?"

"Yeah, I was thinking it was either that, or he's a second Zero. It wouldn't be the first time Zero represented more than one person."

Hongou let out a hum of thought, before saying, "No, I believe June would be the mastermind behind all of this. The two of them... are about the age the children from the Nonary Project would be." They went quiet, mulling over some things before asking, "Do you suppose that Santa is Aoi Kurashiki?"

"That's what I concluded earlier. It goes to follow then, that June is probably," and at the same time, both said, "Akane Kurashiki."

A mild grunt of entertainment came from Hongou. "Somehow, I'm not surprised."

The most Nijisaki could get out in reply was, "Yeah."

The two fell into silence again. It certainly made for an interesting situation, Hongou could say in the least. They'd wondered what Nijisaki had meant when he said the two vanished. This only locked in a theory. Then, they considered, had the two left, fearing for their own lives? Or were they planning something else? They'd certainly have to be on guard until they got out.

Their thoughts were distracted by a sudden, sharp pain in their head. They managed to push it out of immediate consideration, but as the two went down the hall and the stairs, it only got worse. By the time the two were back to the outside of the incinerator, Hongou stopped and finally rubbed their head. Nijisaki asked something, but they didn't quite hear. His words grew muffled under the intense pain. Just having their eyes open seemed to cause hell. They pressed against a wall.

And there they remained, trying to do what they could to push some of the pain away. It didn't really work, but at the very least, it started to die away after a while and lowered to tolerable levels. They finally opened up their eyes. Nijisaki was staring at them with shock.

"Are you… all right?"

They gave a nod, but didn't feel too sure of that. "A sudden headache…" They pushed off the wall and waved a hand toward the incinerator. "I'll be fine. Let's get moving."

Nijisaki looked in disbelief for a moment before saying, "Okay…" and following after them into the incinerator.

"Do you have the number 0 bracelet ready?" they asked as they went into their coat, pulling out the two they had on them.

"Uh… yeah." He held it up. "Just tell me when to."

Hongou turned to the RED beside the door and held the number 8 bracelet up to it.

Nothing happened.

They pulled the bracelet away and tried putting their hand on the panel.

Something happened, but it wasn't the RED taking a number. A loud noise of metal sliding and a motor working filled the room and echoed off the walls. The two turned around only to catch the doors as they slid shut. A siren echoed in the area.

"Warning. Warning," an automated voice called out. "Emergency incineration command has been acknowledged." Red lights bathed the room. "Automatic incineration will take place in… 18 minutes. Please evacuate the incinerator immediately."

Hongou's hands fisted, and their eyes glared at nothing. A single name came out of them.

"Kurashiki."


	7. END: Part 3

The screen had turned on, but the most I could do was just stare at it. My vision was blurred and kept me from seeing details. I raised my hand up to my eyes again and wiped them, but that was really good for a second or two. I was terrified- Wildly so, and I'd say I had a pretty good reason. I could hear the incinerator calling out the time, and the red light emitted from a light at the top of the room was giving a bad glare on the screen.

I knew what the puzzle on the screen was. It was called "sudoku". I'd seen some people do it, but I had no idea how. I'd tried it once when I was 10 and never again. There was no way I remembered any of the instructions I'd gotten. I couldn't call for Jumpy. I hadn't gotten anything from him for a good while now. He was gone, and my last memory of him was something painful in his back. It'd nearly knocked me over.

Time passed. I did nothing. My mind was frozen, stuck watching myself just sob in what remained of my reflection. My body was hot. Part of me wondered if the incinerator had already turned on and was burning me. I almost wished it did.

And then, a horrible voice besides the incinerator cut the air.

"Hey! What are you _doing?!_"

It was muted, but I could tell that the person was screaming. It broke me from my trance, sending a new wave of fear through me. I turned around and looked to the doors I'd first entered. Against one of the windows was a face- An eye, really, wide and noticeably furious despite it being hard to see. It was Hongou, of course. Somewhere in my mind, I almost thought they were about to break down the door and hurt me.

"Aw, don't know what to do?" they crooned, but it was clear they were taunting me. "It's simple, really, but I suppose I might as well tell you! Just solve that puzzle on that machine!" A laugh came out of them, broken and barely human. It was more like they'd hit a sense of a high and that was their way of dealing with it.

I felt my teeth sink into my lower lip as I tried to swallow down some of my tears and catch a breath. My throat felt raw from screaming and crying, but I still shouted back in response, "You're a horrible person! I hate you!"

"Oh my!" they exclaimed, but it sounded far from genuine. "How could you call a _gentleman_ such as myself a _terrible person?_ That's not very nice." Their hypocrisy only served to make me a bit more angry. They continued speaking. "I'm quite fair. I don't use tricks or play dirty. You see? I've even left you a way out."

I glanced back behind me, to the screen I hadn't touched. "A… a way out?" I asked, being sure to be loud so I was heard.

"Didn't you hear me?" Their tone quickly grew disgusted. "All you have to do is solve that puzzle. Do that, and you can stop the incinerator!"

Stop it? Did they really expect me to believe that after what just happened? I started to glare at them as I said, "What's the point of stopping it?! You'll only capture me and make me do this all again! I'm not going to listen to you!" My hands went into fists and I took in a shaking breath before I finished with, "If you're just going to throw me back in here, I might as well die now!"

"My goodness!" They sounded exasperated, but there was an odd layer of sweetness to their words. It didn't comfort me. "Haven't you listened to anything I've said? I told you, I'm a fair person." There was a pause, and they picked up on my confusion. "If you solve the puzzle, the verification function of the RED will in turn activate. If the experiment is to deliver valid results, there must be a chance of success. If you succeed, you _will_ escape."

"The verification function… of the RED?" The words sounded strange and were hard to say. My mind worked to what it was, and then I remembered. Before Hongou had left, they'd scanned two bracelets into the RED. I turned around and looked at it.

"Ah, so you _do_ remember! Right now, there are two numbers in the RED. The first is 1 and the second is 3. Say now… what's your number?"

I looked down at my wrist. The bracelet gave me back a 5. I did the math, lightly counting on my fingers. 1, 3, and 5 would make 9. I scrambled away to the door with the 9 on it and slammed my hand against the RED. It hurt, and I pulled my hand away instinctively. I then put it back on, but lighter now. Both times, though, nothing had happened.

"You _really _aren't one for listening, are you?" I heard Hongou call. I turned around. They kept talking. "I already told you, didn't I? Once you solve the puzzle, the verification function of the RED will activate. In other words, if you haven't solved the puzzle, you can't enter your number! What kind of a fool are you?"

Once more, I began to felt tears threaten my eyes. I'd managed to control them by now, but their cold voice was rattling. I looked at the little window with fear. "Why… why are you doing this?" Why _me?_ Why this? What was going on in their head?

Their reply started with an empty, "_Ha!_" It was sharp and managed to startle me out of nearing tears. "You could never understand. You don't know what it's _like_ to spend _every day_ surrounded by _monkeys._"

I couldn't come up with a reply. I knew what they were referring to. What resonance I used to have with Junpei had told me several things, but they still managed to silence me.

They either didn't notice or didn't care. "Now, start the experiment!" they ordered. "Solve the puzzle!"

"I can't!" I shouted back, trying desperately to explain. "I don't know how!"

"Of _course _you don't!" For the first time in a while, I saw the eye closed. They were shaking their head, if I had to guess. "Isn't that the point?!" The eye came back and I felt myself shrink in my clothes again. They finally explained. "You understand, don't you?! Access the morphogenetic field and find the solution!"

For a moment, I stopped, trying to call for Junpei. But I wasn't sure how, and nothing came. My voice was shaking as I said to Hongou, "I can't!"

"Then you'll die! You'll burn alive!" they answered, not an inkling of some kind of hesitation in their voice. They laughed as they had before, and it sent a chill down me. "It's going to get quite hot in there in a few minutes! I imagine it will be very painful!" They pulled away from the window again, that laughter of a rush cracking the air as it had not long before. They walked off to somewhere. I could hear the laughter getting a bit quieter, but it was still there.

The incinerator's voice cried out again as it had been for a while, but only now did I really register what it was saying.

"Automatic incineration will take place in… 10 minutes."

And finally, I was broken. I started helplessly crying again, hands covering myself. This time, though, there was no stopping it. I was terrified, and I was alone. My mere emotions, the only thing more raw than my throat, were threatening to crush me. I managed to pull my hands down enough to see, and, by some unholy miracle, I forced myself to the monitor again. It did absolutely nothing but only increase my feelings of helplessness.

"I can't… I just can't," I meekly said aloud. "There's no… no way… I just can't figure this out…" My eyes looked at the rows of boxes and numbers. I couldn't think of what to do. Junpei wasn't there anymore. There wasn't enough time for the detective to come rescue me. The RED wouldn't open. There was nothing I _could_ do. I was going to burn. That was all my mind was thinking of anymore. I was going to burn.

I reached my hands out to the monitor. They were shaking and sweating, or maybe that was from my tears. My body was hot, and overwhelmingly so. It was hard to breathe. I felt lightheaded. One hand rested on the keyboard while the other suddenly dove into my pocket. I hardly realised it as I gripped the doll I'd even come down to get. The doll that Jumpy had given me. I at least had that, and it gave me some kind of numbing hope. I pulled it out and put my other hand around it, looking at it.

"Help me… Jumpy…" My voice was weak. "Jumpy… Somebody!" My voice only rose in volume and despair. "Anybody! _Help me!_"

"Akane?!"

I froze, and nearly dropped the doll. I managed to catch it just before I did. I turned around. Nothing was there, but that voice had come from somewhere close, like it was in the incinerator with me. It was a voice I'd just grown very used to. This was cruel. This was too cruel. My grip on the doll tightened. Why was this happening to me? It took most of my effort to only just shout the name.

"Hongou!"

* * *

><p>Nijisaki repeated what Hongou had said. "Akane?"<p>

They didn't reply immediately. They looked around the room. They'd heard her. They knew they had. They knew that voice, so where was she…?

"What the hell?" they shouted aloud, frustrated. "Where are you?"

With a tone of not being quite sure, Nijisaki answered, "Right here?"

"No, not you." Hongou looked at the screen again. Their hands gripped the sides of the keyboard. "Not you… Kurashiki! Where are you?!"

They barely even noticed as Nijisaki snapped, "Now's far from the time to be thinking about that, Hongou!" Something else caught their attention. That returning voice, like she was right beside them.

"_What do you mean, where am I? You… You threw me in here!"_

"Threw you where?"

"_This incinerator!" My voice shook as I called out my location._

Their eyes glared at their reflection. Were they hallucinating now? They could hear her so clearly, but not as June. It was a voice they recalled from their past- 9 years prior, when they'd been witness to Akane Kurashiki do the impossible and solve a puzzle she shouldn't have been able to. But when they tried to think of what she said, or what exactly happened, they felt their head begin to hurt again.

_They'd gone quiet. I didn't know why they were acting oblivious, but my panic didn't care. It was begging for any sort of help, and it made me shout, "Don't go!"_

"You're… in an incinerator," they repeated.

"_Please, let me out of here!" I pulled the doll close to me. "I can't do this!"_

They began to slowly put things together. They were talking to Akane Kurashiki at 12 years old, be her real or fake. She was trapped in the incinerator, and they had a damn good guess to what she needed to do.

"You have to solve the puzzle."

"_I can't!" My voice cracked. "I don't know how! I don't know how to do this!"_

Real or fake… Real? Could the voice talking in their ear truly be real? It seemed so wild to consider. Akane had definitely accessed the morphogenetic field 9 years ago, but it had been with them? They strained to recall anything they heard her say back then, but as it had before, it only started pain. They closed their eyes tight and tried to go past it, but it was white noise.

"... Nijisaki." They looked over. "What did the note say? The bottom of it?"

"_Note…?" I repeated. Who was Nijisaki? I didn't have time for this. I needed to get out!_

"I swear, Hongou, if this isn't related…" Nijisaki went into his pocket and pulled it out, reading it allowed. "After our names, it say, "I must punish them. For the innocent lives they sacrificed. This is the only warning they will receive. That innocent lives might be saved, I now state the truth." … Zero." He looked up. "Hongou, what's going on?"

"That innocent lives might be saved," they repeated in a low voice. An empty laugh shook them. "Oh, I think I understand why this game was hosted now." How sly of Kurashiki. They certainly hadn't seen this coming. "I'll play your game, _Zero._ … Akane!"

_I nearly jumped at my name. Their voice had faded out, and dread had started to overtake me. I was quickly growing convinced that I was going to die. But as they said my name, that weak hope for a miracle came back. I looked up. "Y-Yes!"_

"... I know you can't solve this puzzle, so I'm going to tell you what the answer is."

"_You are?!" Somewhere in my mind, it warned me that they were lying, but I didn't care. This was my only chance._

"Yes. Do you know how the machine works?"

"_Um… The lever moves the purple square around, right?"_

"Correct. When you get to a blank tile, you need to press one of the numbers on the keyboard to enter what you want."

"_Okay…" I looked to the screen and grabbed the lever, moving it curiously. The purple outline shifted. I put it back to the first tile. "I think I got it."_

"Good, because neither of us have much time to waste." Hongou looked to the screen. Numbers they'd long memorised began to come back to them. "Enter these numbers left to right." They then began to recite each of them, entering the data themself as they went along.

3, 1, 6, 9.

8, 7, 9.

6, 3, 5, 1, 7, 4.

2, 4, 5, 9, 8, 1.

6, 7, 3, 9, 5.

3, 4, 6, 8.

9, 4, 8, 6, 5, 7.

7, 1, 4, 3, 8.

5, 1.

The tiles across the screen began to have their background fill to blue. They went one after one, until they were all blue. At the bottom of the screen was an equation, saying, "2+4+5+7+8". Nijisaki, who'd come beside them but said nothing, translated it.

"The answer is 26."

Hongou gave a nod to show they heard, but said aloud, "Akane!"

"_Yes!" My voice was more of an exclamation than a response. I'd put in the final number, and the screen responded. "I… I think that did it!"_

"Then press the Enter key and get out of there."

"_O-Okay!" I took in a breath. I'd managed to calm myself down enough to hear what they were saying, but my body was still tense. I wasted no time in pressing down the key. A few moments later, and I echoed what the voice said._

"_Emergency shut down command has been acknowledged… Incineration system has been shut down! It's… It stopped!" The red light faded away, and the monitor began to sink back into the ground. "I'm not… I'm not going to die!" Already unstable as it was, I found myself crying, but it was far different from before. An intense relief and joy overcame me. It knocked me onto my knees and I hugged myself as if needing to be sure I was all right. I was safe. Laughter started to break in. I didn't try to fight it. I was all right, and I was enjoying it._

Hongou went quiet. Had that… really happened? Did they just save Akane Kurashiki? They tried to think back once more, and it was hurting less. Small bits of sentences began to come to their mind, bits of sentences they'd heard not even a minute ago.

"Hongou!" Nijisaki's harsh voice broke them from their trance. "What are you doing?! Press 'Enter'! Let's get out of here."

They shook their head. "Right." But before they could move, someone else interrupted them.

"_Hongou…" I needed to know one thing. I'd managed to stand back up and wipe away my years. "Why did you… do this? I thought you wanted me dead."_

"I didn't want you dead," they corrected. "I just wouldn't care if that happened. What I wanted was for the experiment to be a success. … And it is. Now leave the incinerator, Akane. I have to go now as well."

_I didn't really understand, but I didn't really care at the moment either. I just called back, "Okay!" And with compulsion, I added, "Thank you!"_

She was thanking them? Did she even remember who put her in there? Aloof as ever, they said, "Stop dawdling. … Goodbye for now, Kurashiki."

"Talk about being hypocritical," Nijisaki remarked. "Are we leaving or not?"

"Of course," they answered and pressed down on the Enter key.

Nothing happened.

"What...?!" They looked back to the screen. They hadn't messed anything up. They pressed the key again. Still, the alarm went off, warning of the remaining 60 seconds. A third try, and nothing happened. They faced Door 9 with a furious look. "Don't tell me she…"

Nijisaki looked to the monitor again before bolting up to the scanner. "Let's… Let's test the RED again!"

"You want to test it again?" they repeated. "The puzzle did nothing, Nijisaki. This has been a trap since the beginning!"

"I'm still- I don't care! I'm trying anyways!" He put his hand on the RED. To both of their surprise, it actually accepted the bracelet. He turned around, and shared a startled look.

Hongou bolted over while Nijisaki scanned in the number 0 bracelet. When Hongou came up, they wasted little time in pulling out the needed bracelets. They were put up to the scanner before their hand was placed on it as well. With the five numbers in, Nijisaki yanked down on the lever.

"Central gate has been opened," the incinerator called out. "Incineration system has been disabled."

The two didn't hesitate as the door slid open. They ran through and came to the DEAD, scanning all of them in rapid succession. Only when the lever was pulled on it and the bracelets all shut off did the two finally relax. Nijisaki pressed against a wall, and Hongou put the two bracelets they had out away.

The two said nothing for a bit before Nijisaki looked over. "Hongou, what happened in there? Why were you talking to yourself?"

They looked to the stairs the two would need to climb, and answered, "I believe I just ensured the Nonary Project was a success."

"What?"

They began to climb up. "I'll explain as we walk. I'm not entirely sure myself."

* * *

><p>A low beep hit the air. There was a dull clanging, and then the sound of grinding. Before me, Door 9 slid out of the way. Beyond it were three people, but only one did I really notice.<p>

"Akane!"

"Aoi!"

I ran toward my brother and threw my arms around him in probably the greatest hug I'd ever given. My voice was practically gone, but I didn't care. I buried my face into his chest and found myself releasing another bout of tears. He put his arms around me in return, and I could hear him biting back tears of his own.

Being there was so incredibly calming and reassuring. It was a strange contrast to what had existed only minutes before, but in no way was I about to protest. I wanted to stay there forever, just safe in my brother's arms.

Except that I wasn't safe quite yet. The bracelet around my wrist and the ones in my hand were ticking away dutifully. I pulled away quickly, saying, "One minute," and looked around. It was only a short time before I found the DEAD and deactivated everything. I backed away, setting the two spare bracelets on the ground. I then turned around and faced the group. The two I would come to know as Snake and Seven were facing me, their shock obvious. Aoi had a huge grin, and I quickly came back over, holding his hand. I just wanted to be close with him anymore.

"All right," he said, squeezing my hand, "let's get out of here. If we don't book it, we might run into Hongou again."

That seemed to pull the two from their trance, and we all agreed before taking off up the large, spiraling staircase.

* * *

><p>"And… then we got out," I finished, looking out a window to try and distract myself from my immediate settings. So many years later, and I was still never comfortable with cars.<p>

Aoi was quiet, focusing on the desert in front of him, but now he finally spoke. "So, Hongou ended up saving you… Talk about ironic."

"You're telling me." I really couldn't say I was happy, though. Each timeline I lived through, I always hoped it would be the right one. I could always see into the others, of course, but there wasn't exactly telling how it would go until it happened. And this one wasn't the right one. I was still alive, but it wasn't what would be a happy ending to this section of my life.

Aoi's fingers tapped on the steering wheel of the car we were in as he thought, before saying, "But… isn't all this useless, then? Junpei's dead, and he's a part of the plans for the Mars Mission Test Site _and_ the AB Project. We're not going to have Quark in the AB Project as a result, and Clover's dead, so we can strike her out. Are we even going to have Alice since Clover's not going to be there?"

"It'll be all right, assuming the project is a success," I answered, looking over. "This timeline isn't entirely doomed."

"If you so say so, Akane, I'll believe it." He held a faintly amused look. It was a phrase he'd said several times. He'd slowly learned he wouldn't ever to really be able to grasp what I could do and see, but he didn't reject it. He went with it and put the best of his faith in me. I tried not to let him down as best as I could.

"I have to ask though… If Junpei was supposed to help run the mission test site, then what's going to fill for him?" Aoi glanced over. It wasn't like there was much to be wary of in a desert, and though I knew that, I still felt myself cringe a bit. "The slightest change of a person can shift everything around."

I went back to staring at the sand and mountains outside the window. "There are timelines where it isn't Junpei who's part of it, but a variety of people. In some of those, we succeed. In some of those, we fail. We have to adapt and plan accordingly to what might happen, and be prepared for anything."

"... Yeah… I guess." There was a pause before he got a grin. "For now though, let's think shorter. Meaning I need some food."

I laughed a bit. Only he could manage to jump a topic like that. "You and me both. We'll need to stop at a restaurant. Nine hours was too long without a bathroom break."

"It's like we're in school again!" He adjusted the rear-view mirror. "But anyways, I think we just passed a cactus or something. Want me to stop?"

I looked over, disgusted. "You want me to pee… on a cactus."

"Yeah!" Apparently, he couldn't see the major issue with that.

I rolled my eyes and went back to the window. "No thanks. I've made it this far. I'll last for," I picked up a phone plugged into the radio, "however long it is until we stop." I rifled through it for directions to the nearest town. I had them somewhere, but where that somewhere was remained a mystery.

"If you say so, but feel free to speak up when the cactus turns more appealing. It's gonna get a liiiittle bumpy not too long from now if I remember right."

I shot him a look and turned up the music as it turned to a song he hated but I liked. It was going to be the probable start of a volume war, but it was all in good fun. It'd probably be the only time in a while that we could relax and be like this. The next couple of years were going to be busy, let alone preparing for the AB Project. But for now, at the very least, I was here and this had been a success, in one way or another. With that, we were satisfied.

* * *

><p>"You came from a building farther in the desert?" the woman in front of the two had repeated, her gaze moving between them.<p>

Nijisaki had given her a nod. "That's correct, yes. As for what we were doing, well…" He'd looked at Hongou for a moment. "I'm… not quite sure how to summarise it."

"We were locked in there," Hongou had answered simply. "We were forced to run trials to escape, which we managed to do."

"Were there any others?" Suddenly, the woman had seemed quite excited. "What do you mean by trials?"

"Can we get your name, first of all?" Nijisaki had asked.

"Alice." She'd offered a hand to the two. They each had shook it and introduced themselves, and she'd moved on quickly. "Do you know who put you in there?"

"In… a sense." Hongou's hands had went into their pockets. "They've long left, though-"

"They were there with you?"

They'd shifted slightly. "... Yes."

"And were there others?" A question Hongou had previously ignored.

"Yes, but they… didn't live through the trials." They'd looked down, a depressed look coming across them. Nijisaki had seemed somewhat surprised by the reaction, his eyes going wider, but he'd relaxed after the brief moment passed.

A few questions later, and she had come to learn the names of the players, a very brief description of the "trials", the people behind it, and some other small details. Nothing, though, that could have hinted toward the whole of it or their personal connections to it. In fact, the word "nonary" had never even been uttered.

Alice had taken a moment, processing this all, before she'd come to a single conclusion. "All right. I need you two to take me back to town with you. I can give you instructions for that, but I also need you two to talk some more about this when we get there."

"Talk some more? Can I ask why this has your interest so much?" A single look to Nijisaki had cued him in to what Hongou's thoughts had been- This was getting dangerous.

"I was trying to find that building," she'd explained. "I'm… a detective. I'm certain the people behind what you two went through is connected to what I'm investigating. I need to hear what you two have to say about it all. It could be just what I'm looking for."

Hongou hadn't hesitated to shut her down. "I understand your need, but we've been through a lot. I believe we both just need to rest."

But before she had even tried to convince them otherwise, Nijisaki had said, "Well, we can talk after we have a bit of time to regather ourselves. Is that fair?"

Nijisaki wondered, thinking back now, why he'd even said that. A detective? He intended to tell a detective about the Nonary Game? He'd bargained for some time beforehand, but he could already imagine that he was going to end up being scolded half that time.

He mildly tuned in to whatever Alice and Hongou, or "Gen" as they'd introduced themself to her, were talking about. Last he heard, they'd been talking about some news or whatever. Now it sounded like animals. Pets, maybe? He heard the word "cat" before he went back to brooding and looking at the desert. Trust Hongou to be able to get into a topic like that. They had too many cat stories they could tell. He didn't even understand the appeal of cats. They were cute, sure, but birds were better in his opinion. He muffled a smile, thinking about his budgies.

That was until something gathered his interest, and he perked up.

"Is that a road?"

Alice didn't even need to look out the window. "It is. This is about where you have to break off the path to get to the building. Head onto it."

The car started off toward the side. Nijisaki let himself drift out of the conversation again, latching onto different topics. There was a lot to process from what had happened. There had been quite a number of discoveries come the end of the game, including that Hongou…

_...killed someone. People, really… They said it was for defense. Clover and Snake- Light were going to turn on us, and Junpei was going to kill Hongou. But what about Kubota and Musashidou? Why are they dead? Were they honestly going to kill me, or me while under the assumption of being Light, after all?_

_And then there was everything they talked about on the stairs. More stuff about the morphogenetic fields… But this time, they personally accessed it and talked to someone- No, Akane of all people, through it. Would that make them an Esper, then? That's almost funny._

_There's still so much I don't get. I doubt it's going to come out in this questioning. I can almost hear their excuses and twist of things. I get why. One wrong word could give out bad information, and we're talking to a detective here, possibly policemen. ... Doesn't make it any less predictable._

He doubted he could just ask, though. Hongou wasn't someone to give a direct answer to things they'd decided to protect. They'd elaborate a bit, but any major points were muffled. He'd seen it, been part of it, and been given it. Annoyingly enough, for all his experience, he couldn't sort it out when he was given it, but he'd try.

He ran a hand over his face, rubbing his eyes in the sweep, before putting it over his mouth while he yawned. Maybe he'd have better luck grasping all of this when he didn't feel like he was about to pass out.

Or maybe he didn't really want to try and figure it out, now that he sat on it. Was this something he really needed to explore? What happened was questionable, but what was he going to do anymore, quit Cradle? And go do what, exactly? It wasn't like he had a real reason to leave the company.

_Except that your boss is a murderer,_ part of him snipped.

Well… so long as it wasn't directed at him, right? Santa's words repeated themselves in his head as they had many times before.

"_Are we really going to leave this and just be okay? After death has slapped us in the face more times than I feel like counting? Are we even going to be the same people?"_

He was snapped out of his thoughts as Hongou spoke his name, asking if he was all right. He looked over and mumbled, "Yeah, fine. Just thinking." He turned to the window again

"_If you want it to be, then it's possible,"_ had been Hongou's flawless reply.

Those words carried him to bed later that day. If he wanted everything to be normal, he could make it that way. He wanted it, but he knew that this could only be a prologue to more.


End file.
